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- Title
Rime of the Reagan Library: Remixing Digital Literature as a Critical Method.
- Authors
NESS, RICHARD; HAMPER, MARGARET BERTUCCI; GOTTLIEB-MILLER, LAUREN
- Abstract
Our project remixes Stuart Moulthrop's 1999 hypertext novel Reagan Library. Moulthrop's work suggests that hypertext fiction is a "crime against the humanities," a sardonic reference to the academy's trivialization of electronic literature. We argue that Moulthrop's work invites its readers to engage with his text at the level of code, and our project takes up this challenge through the performance of a remix. It is a scholarly intervention in the field of software studies, demonstrating one way in which new interpretive frameworks can be applied to produce meaning from electronic texts. We argue that remix is a key method for engaging electronic literature because it allows us to access the expressive capacity of computational processes. Our remix of Reagan Library allowed us to understand the underlying structure of Moulthrop's work while simultaneously providing a new framework to revisit a canonical text, Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and engage with it in a new way. We used the remix as an occasion for exploration and invention and as a new way to approach scholarship in the humanities. Engaging with Reagan Library's code allowed us not only to better understand its narratives but also to uncover a more complex, nuanced argument about the nature of memory, both human and nonhuman. Our essay guides readers through the process by which we gained access to the digital underbelly of Reagan Library, explores our findings, and showcases the website and remix that grew out of this work. Ultimately, our project attempts to provide scholars with another possible intervention for writing and thinking about electronic literature.
- Subjects
REAGAN Library (Book); MOULTHROP, Stuart; HYPERTEXT fiction
- Publication
Hyperrhiz, 2016, Issue 15, p38
- ISSN
1555-9351
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.20415/hyp/015.e04