EBR

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Recent essays

2013-12-01

The E-Literary World and the Social

According to Janez Strehovec, e-literature operates on the model of post-Fordist immaterial production. He argues it's precisely because "a part of contemporary art (especially the new media one and e-literature) is crossing into the service sector of (new) networked economy in the post-industrial, information, spectacle-  and software society" that e-literature needs to cultivate its own autonomous context.

Janez Strehovec
2013-12-01

The Archeology of Representation: Steve Tomasula’s The Book of Portraiture

Shoba Ghosh contends that in The Book of Portraiture, Steve Tomasula’s exploration of how artists in specific historic moments narrativize uncertainty in the constitution of the subject illuminates the conceptual framework that produces a number of significant global dynamics. According to Ghosh, Tomasula demonstrates that the contemporary subject’s body has become “no more than an agglomeration of brands” that can be “fashioned in the image of desire,” though at the same time, “desire also seeks to deterritorialize itself.” For Ghosh, Tomasula’s aesthetic treatment of that subject-defining tension ultimately assists in “track[ing] the loop by which Empire and Terrorism, State and Extremism, America and its 'other' produce each other simultaneously.”

Shoba Venkatesh Ghosh
2013-11-03

Cary Wolfe, Before the Law: Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2013).

John Bruni contends that Cary Wolfe’s latest book "Before the Law: Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame” discusses the “legal issues that inform our relationships with non-human animals.” Bruni writes that in doing so Wolfe dissects the process of law-making and appearing “before the law” as animals, which might be potentially harmful and eclipse the existence of animals beyond the human sphere. According to Bruni what distinguishes Wolfe’s perspective is that he does not promote any form of “ecological self-righteousness” but rather asks the question whether we need to move beyond species-based discourses that constantly pits humans and animals against each other in an essentially unwinnable impasse—to a more ethical approach that may expand the "community of living."

John Bruni

Electronic Book Review (ebr) is a peer-reviewed journal of critical writing produced and published by the emergent digital literary network. Although ebr threads include essays addressing a wide range of topics across the arts, sciences, and humanities, ebr's editors are particularly interested in critically savvy, in-depth work addressing the digital future of literature, theory, criticism, and the arts.

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