Literature Beyond the Text: Vliterature, Towards a Post-textual Literature?

Moving from writing to amateur video could not have happened without the easily available technology and the web and social media that enable the author to circulate their work without needing a heavy infrastructure. In this sense, and with the underlying open attitude to the concept of the literary and modes of publication, this new ‘vliterature’ is fundamentally governed by the logic of the internet. At the same time, in addition to being inspired by filmmakers’ diaries and experimental short film, it can also be seen as a return to an older form of literature, the tradition of orality. This paper proposes to discuss the context in which this trend has emerged and the various practices it has engendered, with a focus on the modes of presence of what can be considered to be ‘literary’ practices and artefacts in such ‘writerly videos’ or vliterature. François Bon’s reflections on the place of the videos in his work and their relation to literature, set in the broader context of the evolution of his literature from Minuit novels to blogs and print-on-demand self-publishing, will provide the main thread for thinking through the reasons and implications from the author’s perspective and imagining it further as a potential future form in the life of literature.

(Source: Abstract ICDMT 2016)