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1. Electronic Literature, or Whatever It’s Called Now: the Archive and the Field

   The umbrella term ‘electronic literature’ arches broadly over a multitude of digital art forms, so long as they satisfy the criteria ‘electronic’, and ‘literature’. However, it is this paper’s primary contention that the extent of the term’s coverage is delimited by whatever has already been archived. Understandings of what constitute ‘literature’ and the ‘literary’ are manifold and include concepts of the letterary (also as in ‘belles lettres’), the poetic, the lyrical – but also, the canonical, and the institutional. This paper will argue that that which can now be pointed to by literary and digital humanities scholars, and called ‘electronic literature’, is in large part only recognisable because archivisation has been used in its regard as an instrument for institutionalisation and canon-creation. This body of work is also only findable because archivisation has preserved it, faced as it is with the constant threats of platform erosion, and obsolescence sooner rather than later. Archivisation is therefore both a problem of media, and a problem of selection.

   Vian Rasheed - 12.11.2019 - 03:35