Regards Croisés:Perspectives on Digital Literature (review)

The least one can say of this collection of essays on electronic literature is that it is different from most existing material on the topic. Even when written outside the U.S.A., this material is strongly indebted to what is being done in American academia: in the authoritative critics and theoreticians most often quoted, such as N. Katherine Hayles, George Landow or Lev Manovich; the works and authors recently canonized by the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO); but also in that the gate-keeping institutions are all definitely North American, and U.S. English is their global language. Regards croisés does not ignore this line of thinking and working, since all the contributors to this volume (Shuen-Shing Lee, Alckmar Luiz dos Santos, Camille Paloque-Bergès, Eugenio Tisselli, Janez Strehovec, Alexandra Saemmer, Sandy Baldwin and Philippe Bootz) are well-known theoreticians and practitioners in the field, often with a proven international (read: U.S.) record and in all cases a good knowledge of the ongoing research at Brown, MIT, San Diego, etc. Moreover, the ambition of this book is not all to criticize the research done in the U.S. or in relationship with it. Its basic stance, which in a certain sense is not unlike the "glocalized" project defended by Leonardo (as readers may know, the journal has also an affiliate body publishing in French!), is rather to offer a broader, i.e. linguistically and culturally more diverse, framework for the study of emergent forms of literary writing.

How is this difference then made concrete and palpable in this volume? What strikes at first sight is of course the ambition to take into consideration works written in other languages—French and Portuguese for instance. However, this expansion of the field remains superficial (although important and necessary, of course) in comparison with the real breakthrough proposed by all the contributors, namely the conviction that even works produced for the global market and with the help of such universal tools as the modern digital media are deeply rooted in local cultural and linguistic traditions and can only be understood when referred to them. Hence, the overall emphasis on the importance of language in electronic literature, and the subsequent claim that the visual turn and the multimediatization of the (hyper)text do not suffice when it comes down to understanding why certain authors are doing what they are doing. In addition, this foregrounding of the text goes far beyond the simple reminder that not everything in new media has shifted toward visual and multimedia signs. Finally, it also implies the necessity to study the specifically verbal dimension of digital literature in relation to literary ideas, traditions, debates and models in which contemporary e-texts are deeply embedded.

More specifically, this reopening of digital literature to textual and verbal signs takes three different forms. First of all, a strong accent is put on close reading. Second is the highlighting of the historic density of concepts, genres and models. When contributors to this book use the word "poetry," for instance, they take care in defining what cultural practice and structure of feeling lie behind or underneath a word that is deceivingly simple. Yet it makes a crucial difference if one accepts or rejects the idea that poetry, although being a "machine," is also aiming at "producing emotions." French poet and theoretician Paul Valéry, whose reflections on poetry still play a paramount role in French culture, said both, but contemporary critics of digital poetry, who may like to quote Valéry's statements on the machinic aspects of poetry-writing, will tend to discard or simply ignore the flip side of Valéry's poetics. Given their attempt to disclose the cultural background of writing and literature in specific historic and geographical contexts, the essays in this book manage to offer more than once a refreshingly multifaceted approach of their...