Processualités des œuvres numériques : Entre génétique et performativité composée des œuvres à travers le temps

Abstract

This article focuses on the study of digital literary works, whose existence no longer needs to be demonstrated. If these works have often been examined by their poetic characteristics (multimodal dimension, interactivity, etc.), the understanding of their immediate anchorage in their context (technological and sociodiscursive) remains to be perfected. It is a study of the materiality of the digital works that this article proposes, allowing to seize them in their processual nature under two angles: the upstream and the downstream of the work. The attention paid to the genetics of digital literary works leads to attesting to the difficulties posed by writing in a digital context, which is hidden behind often opaque systems. The study of the performativity of works, on the other hand, allows us to situate them in their environment and to better observe their dependence on the contexts in which they are read. The understanding of digital literary practices is thus enhanced, as the works are perceived differently than by their immanent characteristics.

Keywords:

• Digital literature
• processual
• poetics
• performance
• genetics
• context

Additional information

Notes on contributors

René Audet

René Audet, Full professor of contemporary literature and digital culture at Université Laval (Québec), is interested in current forms of narrativity, the digital transformation of the publishing world and digital literatures. He is the director of the Ex situ Laboratory and of the digital scholarly publisher Codicille. He co-edited with Nicolas Xanthos Ce que le personnage contemporain dit à la critique (Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2019) and co-authored with Tom Lebrun a white paper on “Artificial Intelligence and the Book Industry” (2020).