Global Networks

This intervention will focus on the circulation of digital literature in the Spanishspeaking context, from a distant reading perspective, analyzing digital literature as information, and its pieces as global artifacts in circulation. The aim is to discover how local processes co-exist and dialogue in a global network that is changing the way that texts are distributed and accessed, and it is modifying the very essence of texts themselves.

I am interested in whether e-lit in Spanish can be “understandable” at a globallevel due to the fact that its works have, in theory, an “unlimited” reach in terms of distribution and reception. Digital literature deals with the globalizing agents of the technological medium itself and of its system of circulation, as well as its technical, linguistic and cultural possibilities. We cannot forget that digital inequality is real, and that it has effects both at the level of production and at the level of reception. We will address if the Spanish language creates a homogeneous community of readers and if Spanish is a good unifying agent for the readers of digital literature. Around what affections and sensibilities have virtual communities of digital literature readers grown up, around what themes, genres, or specific digital creations? Are digital libraries or repositories responsible for creating culturally active reading communities? AreSpanish virtual communities of readers numerous and heterogeneous or, on thecontrary, are they concentrated in large uniform groupings? We will explore in what way the virtual space of Spanish e-lit circulation affect the physical and ubiquitous space with which it overlaps, the “real” territory. As well as if they are intertwined and how they affect each other.

The contemporary world, Doreen Massey notes in “A Global Sense of Place,” is composed of connections and flows that have compelled a fundamental reconceptualization of the local and the global. In such a world, mobility is linked to power, which is achieved through access to economic and cultural capital and freedom to travel. Massey writes, “It is not simply a question of unequal distribution, that some people move more than others, and some have more control than others. It is that the mobility and control of some groups can actively weaken other people.” Speaking also of connections, flows, and control in The Exploit, Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker emphasize the need for a critique of networks, the primary modern structures that modulate the movement of people and goods; they wonder if, “as networks continue to propagate, there will remain any sense of an ‘outside,’ a non-connected locale from which we may view this phenomenon and ponder it critically.” Such apprehensions about the potential for individual autonomy and critical distance in our networked societies suggest that discussions of planetary consciousness, multi-cultural contact, or social justice need to consider the routes and paths by which people and goods travel. Focusing on such flows of people and goods, Esther Polak’s project, “Nomadic Milk,” uses GPS technologies to trace the path of milk production and sale in Nigeria. Her project followed the different routes of nomadic herdsmen and PEAK milk (a major dairy brand in Nigeria) transporters as they delivered dairy to points of sale. This tracing of routes was supplemented by records of the walkers’ and the drivers’ narratives and accounts of their routes, as well as by Polak’s blog recording her own paths as artist. Polak’s project exemplifies how people and goods are subject to both the constraints and the opportunities of a network system. My paper considers how “Nomadic Milk” reveals mobility along established networks and attempts to make invisible routes visible. I argue that “Nomadic Milk” presents travel as a primary mechanism of planetary and local consciousness, and it provokes deliberation of the often consuming power of networks, as well as potential for intervening on their anonymizing, modulating authority. In looking closely at how Polak’s work traces paths and spaces of going, I am interested in exploring a poetics of mobility and the ways in which a reconsideration of ideas of place and path is fundamental to considering the potential for agency in global networks

Source:https://sites.grenadine.uqam.ca/sites/nt2/en/elo2018/schedule/1104/Trac…