When the Literary Mutates and the Digital Emboldens: Transformations in Spanish Electronic Literature of the 21st Century

Abstract

My dissertation analyzes Spanish-language electronic literature from Spain produced using new media technologies over the last 20 years. It more specifically looks at blogs, hypertext novels, hybrid publications that use digital codes needing scanning, and authorship. This project argues that new media technologies are exerting agency on both the physical and cyber world by affecting how literary texts are produced, presented to the reader, and embedded into everyday life. To achieve this, I propose looking at electronic texts through an Actor Network Theory approach as presented by John Law that treats all actors as interacting with various elements, both human and non-human, to create meaning. Supporting this approach is a combination of cyber-ecological and queer methodology that treats digital elements as having agency. In particular, I engage with scholars Stacy Alaimo and Jane Bennett to show that new technology has enabled the formation and visibility of original forms of literary and cultural expression through social media and traditional publishing avenues. Thus, the environment of digital works must be incorporated into any interpretation of the text as a whole. I employ this approach to better analyze a growing presence of individuals, cyber-intellectuals, engaged in social justice causes related to women’s, LGBT, and human rights who are able to network online via blogs and in the physical world to advance their activism. The analysis on hypertext novels provides a more complete understanding of the assemblages that construct meaning in digital works. Hybrid projects, where the content is partially in print and partially available on the Internet, serve to address the convergences of the digital and the physical worlds. Convergences such as these are also impacting the role of authorship in the production of texts in 21st century Spain. Digital components have become a part of everyday life and, subsequently, demand our attention as scholars in order to understand technology’s role in literature and, by extension, society and our lives.