
Negative Media
Erasureand the Limits of Retention
Ella Klik(Author)
Stanford University Press
Will be published approx. on 17. February 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
192 pages
978-1-5036-4526-4 (ISBN)
Description
In a world inundated by an endless proliferation of texts, images, and data, the tension between the human desire to preserve and the economic incentive to retain collides with the finite nature of storage and its attendant costs. The impulse to keep everything inevitably confronts material constraints, compelling a reckoning with erasure as a necessity that enables ongoing creation. As this book reveals, such considerations are far from unique to the digital age.
Spanning early analog sound recordings to contemporary debates about digital cloud solutions, Negative Media proposes that acts of removal, cutting, deletion, and effacement shape the invention and use of popular storage technologies from the 19th century to the present. Ella Klik invites readers to reconsider how recording mechanisms operate, arguing that negation is not a design flaw but a process intentionally woven into the very fabric of these systems. Through engaging stories, including the accidental deletion of the Apollo 11 moon landing tapes, the book traces a genealogy of undoing that reframes our understanding of media's lifecycle, from production to managing scarcity and abundance. Rather than privileging long-term retention as the primary framework for analysis, Klik navigates through media histories and theories to foreground reuse at a moment where prevailing narratives insist-perhaps too boldly-that nothing can ever truly disappear from the internet.
Spanning early analog sound recordings to contemporary debates about digital cloud solutions, Negative Media proposes that acts of removal, cutting, deletion, and effacement shape the invention and use of popular storage technologies from the 19th century to the present. Ella Klik invites readers to reconsider how recording mechanisms operate, arguing that negation is not a design flaw but a process intentionally woven into the very fabric of these systems. Through engaging stories, including the accidental deletion of the Apollo 11 moon landing tapes, the book traces a genealogy of undoing that reframes our understanding of media's lifecycle, from production to managing scarcity and abundance. Rather than privileging long-term retention as the primary framework for analysis, Klik navigates through media histories and theories to foreground reuse at a moment where prevailing narratives insist-perhaps too boldly-that nothing can ever truly disappear from the internet.
More details
Series
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Palo Alto
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
New edition
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 227 mm
Width: 151 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
325 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5036-4526-4 (9781503645264)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Ella Klik is an assistant professor in the graduate program of Hermeneutics & Culture at Bar-Ilan University.
Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Erasure: Everywhere, Nowhere, Right Here
1. Shaving Wax Cylinders, Layer after Layer, Until There Is None
2. Cinematography in a Time of Material Crisis
3. Randomizing Magnetic Particles into Televisual Oblivion
4. Typology of Purge and the Ordering of Erratic Typewriting
5. An Imperfect Web
Conclusion: Yet Something Persists
Afterword: Amid Erasure, We Live
Notes
Bibliography
Archival Sources
List of Patents
Index
Introduction: Erasure: Everywhere, Nowhere, Right Here
1. Shaving Wax Cylinders, Layer after Layer, Until There Is None
2. Cinematography in a Time of Material Crisis
3. Randomizing Magnetic Particles into Televisual Oblivion
4. Typology of Purge and the Ordering of Erratic Typewriting
5. An Imperfect Web
Conclusion: Yet Something Persists
Afterword: Amid Erasure, We Live
Notes
Bibliography
Archival Sources
List of Patents
Index