i.e. it has no printed counterpart.
an ebook may be of any length, inasmuch as it is loosed from capitalistic methods of reproduction. or is it. the latter is not the subject of this short essay.
an ebook may be of any quality. as surely you have been able to discern.
an ebook designs its own rules. an ebook is written in code. an ebook is programmed into online space. an ebook does not simply happen. but it might as well. one moment there is no ebook. the next one can read the ebook in its entirety.
the ebook is not dead nor does it die. the ebook is a connective tissue of literature. the ebook is the flesh of the literary body, de-gendered. the ebook alters the body from which it emerges each time it is read. it is the child which impregnates the mother. returns to the womb and bursts out in the span of an instant. the ebook is an instant. the ebook is the instant.
the ebook is not quite infinite. it does not quite experience the solitude of the unbounded work, the work of sacrifice, the work of absolute ambiguity and shadow. because the ebook can disappear in the span of an instant. for the ebook is constitutive of the instant. and when the ebook disappears there is no longer an instant.
in a way the ebook has always already disappeared. in a certain sense the ebook vanishes in the moment of its reading. but in each renewed moment the ebook makes its violent return from the womb.
for the ebook must die in the womb before it can be born. the ebook must resign from time before it can be placed. the ebook must bear the trace of no one--no mother or father--before it can be inaugurated qua ebook.
the ebook lives on in the very instant of its death. the death which is, has never been, the ebook's, or anyone else's. the death which engulfs the ebook, which is no longer an ebook.
instead, it is me. otherwise said, it is the death of me.
alec
WHO GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO SAY WHAT AN EBOOK IS
ReplyDeleteWHO GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO SAY
WHO GIVES YOU THE RIGHT
WHO ARE YOU
WHAT ARE YOU DOING
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP
WHERE ARE YOU GOING
WHERE ARE YOU FROM
WHAT R U LIVING 4
thank you for commenting on my blog
ReplyDeletei'm not sure how to answer your questions
ReplyDeletesorry
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ReplyDeletelol you guys are the meta-est
ReplyDeleteAll this being said, I admit I don't think that an ebook seems all that different from any other media, or perhaps information at all. 'My Life is Terrible' was(is, if you will) a short and entertaining piece, which I was glad to take part in this afternoon. It might mean more to NCF students, NCF students in New York, college students, people in New York, or NCF students who know the author and are in New York this summer. It's not really malaise, nor is it really seem like disillusionment (I could be wrong). It reminds me of the seeming lack of connectivity experienced by the narrator of 'Less than Zero,' but this is still getting me nowhere nearer what may or may not be the situation. Is 'me' narrating, or live blogging? This is fiction, we are going to accept, so this distinction also bears down less on our absorbtion of the text. And, which despite digitalizaiton, which renders text, a uniform way of expressing every single thing, into an even more uniform format, data, we are only barely further away from the material than we might otherwise be. He does not cry out for help, unless I want to die is a request.
ReplyDeleteAll this being said, good job. I look forward to reading more.
erik, the conclusion i ultimately reached was your own: that ebooks experience the same erasure as every other book.
ReplyDeletewhat do you mean by, "And, which despite digitalizaiton, which renders text, a uniform way of expressing every single thing, into an even more uniform format, data, we are only barely further away from the material than we might otherwise be"?
i came away from the above with a sense of the objectification of text.
the work is dematerialized, stripped of its materiality, but isn't it always?
we might approach this from a different angle.
we might approach our subject as text interrupted by the atextual, or otherwise said, a textual subject intercepted and disambiguated by an exchange: a "book."
of course, i am not all the way capable of discussing this topic up front.
i am not so experienced with the forces of textuality, and even less with those of a text-in-capitalism.
thank you for reading my blog, erik.
i hope you like it and continue to read it and comment on it.
i am embarrassed
ReplyDeleteSorry, Alec. I really got ahead of myself there, and was fairly unclear. I feel we are on the same level on the issue of dematerialization. I was trying to say that text, using letters, is a dematerialization using only 26 characters to signify everything, and then digital media does that to text, using electricity and switches to signify everything. I just don't think that the two of them combined compounds the issue that much. Although it may be worth much more consideration. Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteOne good thing about an ebook is you can't get jam on it.
ReplyDeleteThis blog is really, really good.