Liquid literature: narration in digital environment

Abstract

Zygmunt Bauman, in his vast sociological work on postmodernity, adopted the term 'liquidity' to define our current sociocultural condition, marked by a lack of solidity and durability, such as liquids, which are incapable of retaining their form for a long time. Shifting this discussion to the literary field, we can affirm that the narrative in digital environment has assumed fluid forms, as a consequence of the nature of the web, that subverts the paradigms of production, circulation and reception of texts. But before turning to reflection on the liquefaction of literature in the seas of the Web, I will deal with the concepts of cyberspace and cyberculture, ecosystem and habitat of new social and artistic practices based on digital techniques, from the already classic Cyberculture of Pierre Lévy. Then, drawing on the considerations of the Polish sociologist and the studies on the new horizons for the literary in the cyberspace realized by the literary critic Katherine Hayles and the Professor of English Literature in Harvard, Janet Murray, I will discuss the changes brought about by the interactivity in the old human tradition of storytelling and the development of this new form of literature, still exploited by few authors and unknown to much of the academy.