Abstract
In this chapter, we explore definitions and typologies of digital poetry, drawing from studies on the topic from Anglophone and Latin American academic disciplines. It sets up the larger, pedagogically-focused, generational schematic employed in the book, drawing on a chronologically-organized model developed by Leo Flores. At the same time, a strength of this book is the emphasis placed on the specific cultural cartography of these poets, which is marked and transected by “the Latin American” in a very geo-techno-political and literary sense. This is the way that our book seeks to bridge the cultural and techno-poetic divides that exist between accounts of digital poetry in the Anglophone and European scenes of writing and those that explore the Spanish- (and Portuguese-) speaking one(s).
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Notes
- 1.
Kozak, “Digital Latin American Poetry” (Latin American Literature Today 1.10). Apart from this 2019 dossier and with respect to key works of criticism dedicated to Latin American e-lit—all of which have helped to define this growing field—please see the bibliography included at the end of this volume.
- 2.
We would like to acknowledge the fuzziness present in these formulations regarding the generic and stylistic frontiers purporting to separate, for example, digital poetry from computer games, online performance art, visual artworks, etc. Hayles astutely acknowledges this messiness in the following manner: “Like the boundary between computer games and electronic literature, the demarcation between digital art and electronic literature is shifty at best, often more a matter of the critical traditions from which the works are discussed than anything intrinsic to the works themselves” (12). Her point regarding the genealogical lines drawn by the works themselves is key here, especially if we consider it both in terms of Glazier’s claim (cited below) that e-poetry (and contemporary digital media practice as a whole) dialogues with innovative, Modernist and avant-garde poetic practice as well as the larger generational schema outlined by Leo Flores and others (an integral part of the entries that follow this essay).
- 3.
Rettberg remarks that: “We will focus here primarily on generative literature produced in the English language, but it is important to note that generative literature is an international phenomenon, and many of its most important works have been produced in other languages, particularly in Portuguese and French” (38). He then highlights works by Portuguese writer Pedro Barbosa and French writer Jean-Pierre Balpe. See below for a discussion of combinatory poetics in the work of several Latin American poets.
- 4.
Poet and critic Christian Bök analyzes a canonical work of combinatory poetics—The Policeman’s Beard is Half-Constructed (1984)—in the following manner:
RACTER, the author, is an automated algorithm, whose output confounds the metaphysics of authorship, refuting the privileged uniqueness of poetic genius. RACTER gives voice to its own electric delirium, doing so without cognition or intention, so that, much like a somniloquist, the device automatically blurts out statements that are syntactically orthodox, but semantically aberrant. While we might take solace in our own anthropic prejudice, dismissing such nonsensical communiqués as nothing more than computerized gobbledygook, we might unwittingly miss a chance to study firsthand the babytalk of an embryonic sentience, struggling abortively to awaken from its own phylum of oblivion (10).
- 5.
We might also consider recent groundbreaking developments in terms of map** the field of Latin American electronic literature. The Electronic Literature Organization, for example, has included key works by Latin American and Latinx authors in their three Collections (https://collection.eliterature.org). Scholars from across Latin America have created LITELAT (https://litelat.net), a research network devoted to the topic. In Brazil, a team led by Rejane Rocha has created the Repositório da Literatura Digital Brasileira https://atlasldigital.wordpress.com/o-projeto/; in Mexico, the Centro de Cultural Digital has worked tirelessly to promote electronic literature and digital culture from the region (https://www.centroculturadigital.mx). Finally, in Chile, Carolina Gaínza directs a project titled “Cultura digital en Chile: literatura, música y cine” (http://culturadigitalchile.cl), which has asked some key questions about Latin American e-lit, such as: “¿Existe una “cultura” digital en Chile? ¿Qué características adopta la transformación mencionada en nuestro país? ¿Cómo lo digital afecta los procesos de producción/creación? ¿Cómo afecta la circulación?” (http://culturadigitalchile.cl/descripcion/)
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Weintraub, S. (2024). Situating the Digital in Latin American Technopoetics. In: Weintraub, S., Correa-Díaz, L. (eds) Latin American Digital Poetics. Palgrave Spanish and Latin American Media Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26425-2_1
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