Staggered transmissions

Abstract

The final part of the recent anthology Serialization in Popular Culture (2014) is called 'Digital serialization' and is devoted to 'the influence of digital technologies on serial form.' The chapters throughout the anthology focus on modern serial phenomena such as TV series and computer games, but apart from a chapter on serial fiction in the 19th Century, literature is conspicuously absent. However, the digital revolution has also left its mark on literature and given rise to new publishing strategies, including a resurgence of different forms of serialization. Some of the most notable examples of digital serial fiction are published via Twitter, and through analyses of recent Twitter stories by Jennifer Egan and David Mitchell the article discusses how the micro-serialization of Twitter fiction both differs from and draws on the pre-digital tradition of serial fiction. In order to address these differences and similarities, the analyses focus on two interrelated aspects of serialization, temporality and interaction. Furthermore, they discuss the promotional dimension of Twitter fiction that arises as the financial dictates of legacy publishing intersect with fiction distributed via digital social media.

Soundscapes of subjectivity, desire and violence : a Lacanian reading of Jennifer Egan's Black Box

“…Thus, Egan's story has been interpreted and explored from different perspectives by scholars focussing on different aspects of the story. One of these frame flash fiction as the experi-mental narrative form media of production (Nie 2015); another re-conceptualizes the body as information (Precup 2016); or foregrounds temporality and serialization as characteristics of a short story in a post-digital tradition (Andersen 2017); one highlights how the story's narratological technique is concerned with identity and resistance to political and cultural oppression (Newman 2018), another interprets it as a dystopian story about the human experience in the digital age (Gutman 2020). So far, however, Egan's story has not been explored yet in relation to the Lacanian psychoanalytical framework and its treatment of sound, which appears paramount in understanding how a contemporary literary text thematizes the overall problem of subjectivity in its social context.…”

Time Is/Time Was/Time Is Not: David Mitchell and the Resonant Interval

“…As an on-going fictional narrative published regularly in sequential instalments over an extended period of time, @I_Bombadil, via Twitter, retrieved the Victorian print serial format from obsolescence. Tore Rye Andersen [7] has elsewhere traced the return of serialised literature via the Twitter platform, connecting @I_Bombadil to the temporal and interactive aspects of the Victorian serial form. The intention within this article is to augment Andersen's analysis by examining more extensively @I_Bombadil's retrieval of these aspects of the serial for a contemporary technocultural context, both as a part of Mitchell's wider, retrospective and recursive literary practice, and as a part of the broader dialogue between print and digital media.…”

“…Are you out yet?' 7 At 16:45 and alluding to the temporal disruption of the orison, @Kovacs88 wrote, '45 mins in is long enough, come back?'. 8 4 Mitchell, D. @I_Bombadil.…”