Writing onto the Clouds: John Durham Peters and Inscription Media

John Durham Peters' Speaking Into the Air (1999) is a series of exegeses of textual remains, delivered in the same written mode. These aren’t conversations, since the authors can’t reply. Peters—an estranged reader—catches what he can from letters that weren’t addressed to him. And his own interpretations have the same character: Delivered as writing, they have no addressee. The book’s playful and scattershot style—its runic overflow—is itself a notable abstention from dialogue. This is the main point of my brief monologue: Speaking Into the Air enacts its own argument. In its written form, with its hermeneutic mode, and by its promiscuous prose, the book exemplifies its own moral case for dissemination over (in Peters’ chilling phrase) “interpersonal mimesis” (p. 31). It is itself speaking into the air—or, as I prefer, writing onto the clouds.