No More Learning

40 This point, then, is crucial: beginning in the Age of Goethe-not coincidentally one of the formative periods of German history-stable cultural references such as authorship, originality, individ- uality, and Geist, all accessible           by way of standardized interpretation prac- tices, cut through and homogenized increasing social complexity; this could only occur, however, because a naturalized language now seen as a lucid carrier of meaning cut through and homogenized the different me- dia.