From Print to Hypertext: Digital Media and New Literary Genres

in Latin(o) America

Claire Taylor, University of Liverpool

Literary Heritage and Digital Medianegotiations of existing literary genresvariety of works on a continuumspeak back to rich Hispanic tradition of

literary experimentationNew media genres don’t exist in vacuumDialogue with pre-digital literary movements:e.g. poesía concretista; caligramas;

testimonio; crónica…

(New) Hybrid Forms...Twitter-poetryElectronic balladsBlog-aforismosHypertext short storiesBlognovelaNovela colectivaHypertext short storiesHypertext

documentariesAnipoemasMicrorrelatos.....

Twitter PoetryGrowing and popular genreCf Jason Camlot tickertext1 and tickertext2

(2010)Gavin Heaton TwitterPoetry (2007-)creative use of Twitter’s formal aspects, partic.

restriction to 140 charactersCf haikuCreative use of digital aspects, partic.

possibilities for re-tweetings & linking of Twitter content to other social media platforms

Eduardo Navas

.

Eduardo Navas: Poemitahttp://navasse.net/poemita/individual micropoems Shared themes: new media technologies

themselves; poetic medium; political statements‘Once upon a time, a cloud became the paradigm

of quantification’time-worn literary tropeclassic feature of haiku: reference to the natural

environmentBUT tag clouds: keyword metadata quantified &

visualized

Electronic BalladsArgentine-Spanish author Belén GacheRadical karaoke (2011)http://belengache.netre-mixes set phrases and commonplacesallows the reader-user to create re-mixes of

voice, sounds, images, and special effectsdraws on Hispanic heritage of ballads & oral

poetryAND on technologically-enabled karaoke

Radical karaoke

Radikal Karaoke3 options:1. Ex Africa semper aliquid novi2. Mirad como Kate presume de su anillo3. We have no past, you have no present Pliny the Elder: Africa always brings us

something new Kate Middleton-mania... Intertextual reference to punk...

Radikal KaraokeV6: slaves; trapped

in system of corporate capitalism

Text: ‘nosotros somos los protagonistas’

V4: hyponotized by consumerism, slave to technology…

User interpellated into the system

Blog-AforismosNavas’s Minima Moralia Redux (2011-)http://minimamoraliaredux.blogspot.co.uk/re-mixes and visualizes Adorno’s Minima Moralia:

Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben (written 1944-47)

Adorno: 153 aphorismsPunning on Aristotle’s treatise on ethics, Magna MoraliaAdorno: social practices and institutions, political and

economic structures, the bourgeois era and the fate of the individual

Andreas Bernard, ‘Adorno’s attempt to spell out the alienation of the individual into its minutest ramifications in everyday life’

Challenging the Libro de Aforismos as Genre

Adorno: speak out against alienationawaken the reader to his/her situation:Caught in the political and economic structures

constructed by the state in alliance with capitalvery genre itself – a collection of aphorisms – is

undermined by the contentbook of aphorisms is a bourgeois genreconduct literature: how to behave in accordance

with societal normsAdorno: unmask the structures underlying social

norms

Navas’s AforismosBoxes of lexia, based on Adorno’s originalVisualizationremixed visualizationE.g Aphorism 14Adorno: ‘Private life however is also marked by this’Navas: ‘Private life is certainly marked by this, quite

inevitably, given that the concept of “private” was originally conceived by the very system that now data-mines it in the name of the emerging social media market’.

Just as Adorno critqued the medium of aphorism, so too Navas critiques medium of social media...

Aphorisms for the Twenty-First Century

Adorno’s aphorism

Navas’s remixed aphorism

Hypertext Short FictionsBelén Gache, WordToys (2006)http://www.findelmundo.com.ar/wordtoys/index.h

tm14 individual short fictionse.g. ‘¿Por qué se suicidó la señorita Chao?’ Story: response to the question posed in the titlegenerated at random by an algorithmsequence of lexia in different coloured fontsprincipal actors in the story – ‘la sociedad china’,

‘la señorita Li’ ‘sus padres’ recombined along with set phrases & outcomes

Belén Gache, WordToys (2006)narrative multi-sequentiality as enabled by new media

technologies role of character within new narratology YET: limits of these potentially liberatory new media

technologies always ends on same concluding sentence to the

story:‘Dado que la sociedad se ha tornado en extremo

peligrosa, debemos estar alertas para evitar que nos infrinja a nosotros mismos su golpe fatal.’

Citation from Mao Tse Tungconclusion to the story is already pre-written....

ConclusionsContinuing dialogue between print and

digital formatsLiterary experimentation onlineSelf-reflexive statusRole of reader-user in activating the worksOften critique of limitations of digital media

technologies...

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