JDP Network 1999/2009/2019: A Living History of John Durham Peters’ Historiography

This article provides an archaeology of John Durham Peters’ historiographic methods and strategies by comparing three distinct approaches that the author names JDP1999, JDP2009, and JDP2019. For each of these three JDPs, one key theoretical figure functions as a historiographical guide. Walter Benjamin leads the way for JDP1999. Friedrich Kittler guides JDP 2009. Harold Innis hovers, Google Earth-like, above JDP 2019. The dominant forms of historical evidence are also fundamentally different. JDP 1999 delves into the hidden philosophies and theologies of communication buried in canonical Western texts. JDP 2009 opens up the diagrams, patents, and formulas of scientists and engineers used in the creation of media. JDP 2019 examines the ‘natural world’ as the inscription of being that encodes and decodes itself into existence. A further distinction to be made between JDP 2009 and JDP 2019 regards tools and knowledge of the natural world, both of which figure prominently in the histories discussed. The natural world preexists tools and humans. Its history is deeply inhuman, whereas the history of ideas and of tools is clearly not.