self-publishing

Moving from writing to amateur video could not have happened without the easily available technology and the web and social media that enable the author to circulate their work without needing a heavy infrastructure. In this sense, and with the underlying open attitude to the concept of the literary and modes of publication, this new ‘vliterature’ is fundamentally governed by the logic of the internet. At the same time, in addition to being inspired by filmmakers’ diaries and experimental short film, it can also be seen as a return to an older form of literature, the tradition of orality. This paper proposes to discuss the context in which this trend has emerged and the various practices it has engendered, with a focus on the modes of presence of what can be considered to be ‘literary’ practices and artefacts in such ‘writerly videos’ or vliterature. François Bon’s reflections on the place of the videos in his work and their relation to literature, set in the broader context of the evolution of his literature from Minuit novels to blogs and print-on-demand self-publishing, will provide the main thread for thinking through the reasons and implications from the author’s perspective and imagining it further as a potential future form in the life of literature.

(Source: Abstract ICDMT 2016)

To Genette, the basic “nature of the paratext” is functional (7). In his theoretical account, he
presents a number of paratextual units (title, dedications, epigraphs etc.) and proofs its functionality through the analysis of respective examples. At the same time, he alerts that
paratexts may be unproductive and notes: “from the fact that the paratext always fulfills a
function, it does not necessarily follow that the paratext always fulfills its function well” (409).
That said, paratexts may be dysfunctional in that a paratext does not meet the function Genette
originally envisioned. A paratext is also dysfunctional if it is absent where it’d be expected: based
and bound to the materiality of the book-as-object, Genette has developed a map to locate the
types of paratexts he designates. As per Genette, a preface supposedly precedes a work and an
epigraph shouldn’t intervene a body’s text. Likewise, the publisher’s peritext spans around and
within the body of a work, while the epitext is located outside of a work’s material body. A paratext’s location thus defines its function.
If a paratext is absent in that it isn’t possible to locate it within Genette’s map of paratexts bound
to a publication, it is supposedly dysfunctional. It may however attain an intended literary effect
(as is the case in Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy). Interestingly, the effects of dysfunctional paratexts can make it’s very functions perceptible (cf. Desrochers and Tomaszek). Approached from a more pragmatic perspective however, dysfunctional, or missing paratexts may entail problems connected to the functionality of “identification” (Genette 80).
In this presentation I investigate paratexts that are absent and not localizable where prescribed by Genette. This is the case in numerous publications of electronic literature where what Genette calls the “publisher’s peritext” largely is missing.
Methodologically, I proof the absences with analyses of what appears, or is supposed to be the
“publisher’s peritext” of those publishing apparatuses devoted to electronic literature. All in all, I
take into consideration respective publishers, magazines and journals, but also the apparatus of
individual, self-published works.
In my discussion, I relate to the function the publisher’s peritext is supposed to perform as per Genette and argue for it’s importance from the perspective of those who rely on the publisher’s peritext, such as for example librarians, or database catalogers in the field of electronic literature.