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Wordlyphagic Literature: For biopoetry to microbiological A.I
I have frequently spoken of word and image as viruses or as acting as viruses, and this is not an allegorical comparison.
William S. Burroughs, Electronic Revolution
As with bacteriophages – viruses that parasitize a bacterium by infecting it and reproducing inside it –, literature is permeated by a series of centripetal and centrifugal movements of rarefaction, in which a sequence of virulent “wordlyphagic” language processes chew, devour, swallow, digest, and regurgitate words (just to swallow them again). Moving away from the printed page, or being even more deeply impregnated in its textures, these viral processes can either offer a truly literal meaning to Burroughs' often-quoted words, “Language is a virus”, or simply emphasize its metaphoric sense, just as they can be simultaneously analyzed in vivo by means of laboratorial practices and/or scrutinized by digital algorithms.
Cecilie Klingenberg - 26.02.2021 - 11:23
