The gesture of manipulation in digital literature In the domain of digital or electronic literature, interactive works have already existed for several decades. In an interactive creation, manipulations by the readers are often required so that they can move through the work (for instance in hypertextual narratives). Such manipulations, in these interactive digital creations, are not radically new and there are many examples of literary works which require physical interventions on the part of the reader; for example in Raymond Queneau’s Cent mille milliards de poèmes the readermust construct sonnets from a number of individually printed lines of poetry. Espen […]
Mark Polizzotti, translator of more than fifty books, writes that “… much of the translation theory emerging from academe is simply of little use in either helping anyone understand what translation is, or, from a practical perspective, helping produce better translations. … Translation theory is one of the few disciplines in which the study of the subject seems bent on demonstrating the very subject’s futility” (2018, p. 40). I certainly did not approach Mencía, Pold, and Portela’s essay with the skepticism that Polizzotti has for translation studies in general. My initial attitude was more the outlook that Jan Baetens seemed […]
It is true that Chris Kraus’s After Kathy Acker, due to Acker’s path in life, is nothing but a tour de force for any reader. Indeed, Kraus’s book contributes a great amount of new information to ongoing research on Kathy Acker, offering us insight into letters, journals, and some of Acker’s works. However, it seems that through the image of Acker “laid bare” by Kraus we are caught up in another image, which itself is in dire need of deconstruction. The legitimate choice of writing a biography that focuses on Acker’s personal relationships, after all, excludes the politics inherent to […]
Chris Kraus’s After Kathy Acker is tour de force stuff. In some sense, this is to be expected. Acker led a colorful, bohemian existence before and during her reign as the enfant terrible of postmodern literature. Legendary for her “transgressive” fiction and edgy punk image, Acker was one of the few writers—and only woman writer—to achieve a degree of fame as a countercultural figure in her time. Aware of the dangers depicting such a cult figure, Kraus has written a thrilling biography that respectfully lays bare the self-mythologization and image cultivation behind what would become Kathy Acker. Neither hagiography nor […]
What are we to make of current calls for “practice based” research in the Digital Humanities and e-lit fields? What about “art as research”? Stephanie Boluk sounds a caution concerning the ways that literary studies are being worked into the “instrumentalization and corporatization of the university system.” This series of short interventions were made at the “Futures of Electronic Literature” discussion at the bi-annual Electronic Literature Organization conference in 2012. Titled “Electrifying Literature: Affordances and Constraints,” the conference took place at West Virginia University in Morgantown on June 20th to June 23rd. The contributors were organized by Stephanie Strickland to […]
electronic book review 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. ISSN: 1553-1139 Contact: contact@electronicbookreview.com Editor in Chief: Joseph Tabbi Managing Editor: Will Luers Director of Communications: Lai-Tze Fan Editors: Lai-Tze Fan, Anna Nacher, Jason Lajoie, Anne Karhio, Tegan Pyke, Daniel Johannes Rosnes, Jasmine Mattey Previous Editors: Lori Emerson, Davin Heckman, Lisa Swanstrom, Eric Dean Rasmussen Previous […]
Introduction Every time contributors add a record to the ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base, they have the opportunity to add references to creative works of other articles of critical writing referenced. This enables the formation of a network of critical relations, what we have described in the ELMCIP Knowledge Base project report as a “literary ecology.” Using node references and attached views in the databases, these cross-references automatically display on both the record for critical writing and creative work it refers to. Over time, this develops into documentation of the critical reception of any given work documented in the Knowledge […]
A Preface and a Disclaimer If the first “wave” of Digital Humanities was said to have prompted a quantitative turn, e.g. the compilation and implementation of databases as well as the organization of information in elaborate arrays, then the much anticipated “second wave” is to be “qualitative, interpretive, experimental, emotive, generative in character” (Schnapp & Presner, 2009). As curator of the Brazilian Electronic Literature Collection for the ELMCIP (Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice) Knowledge Base, I have been asked to partake in this second wave and offer a few conclusions about Brazilian electronic literary […]
The title of this paper borrows from Steve Tomasula’s own characterization of his novel in an interview; the central idea of his book, he suggests, is “the archaeology of human representation through layers of history that make up its chapters,” and in which “pages appear as strata in an archaeological dig” (Tarnawsky 2011). Indeed, Tomasula’s phrase “the archaeology of human representation” resonates sharply, for the specter of Foucault hovers tantalizingly throughout one’s encounter with the book. Central to Foucault’s grappling with “the history of the present” – comprising an archaeological method and a genealogical critique – is the idea that […]