A STYLO-TECHNO-SEMIOTIC READING OF DIGITAL LITERATURE AS POSTMODERNIST TEXTS

Abstract

This study analyses Carving in Possibilities (2001); Chemical Landscapes
Tales (2006); Separation (2002); and Star Wars, one letter at a time (2005),
four digital literary texts which are purposively selected from Volumes
1 and 2 of Electronic Literature Organization’s Electronic Literature
Collection. The four texts are analysed relying on hypertextual
aesthetics rhetoric and postmodernist literary theory. The analysis
reveals that temporality, performativity, nonlinearity and interactivity
are semiotic-rhetorical digital affordances that are experimentally
negotiated in the selected texts to accomplish postmodernist
experimental stances. These novel compositional strategies,
accomplished through the availability and exploitation of digital
affordances, direct attention to how the boundaries of philology and
technology merge in digital culture and subsequently call for the
reconfiguration of theoretical, methodological and rhetorical
approaches to research and pedagogy in writing/composition, reading
and textual studies in the digital age.