Workshop: The Political Novel in Europe and the Challenges of the Digital Era

Without a doubt, the digital age is having a profound impact on all aspects of the literary process. It opens up a new context that redefines creative processes, reading practices, distribution methods, and critical reception. Especially the interpersonal relationships involved in its production steps (between authors, publishers, agents, critics, readers, etc.) are being turned upside down by digital technologies: the literary gesture is spread across different platforms, the book is detached from its physical medium, the author may disappear in the face of the possibilities offered by automatic generation (artificial intelligence), and editorial hierarchies and mediations are questioned. Digital issues and practices affect fundamental notions of literary studies. But how are these changes reflected in the novel itself? How has this new context redefined relations with the political sphere (if at all)? What kind of political novel is possible in the digital age?

Our workshop aims to explore the literary and political challenges the digital age poses for the genre of the novel. In her essay Digital Modernism. Making It New in New Media (2014), Jessica Pressman defines “modernism” as “a strategy of innovation that employs the media of its time to reform and refashion older literary practices in ways that produce new art.” (4) What she calls “Digital Modernism” transposes this logic to current practices and issues: “Digital Modernism […] allows us to reconsider how and why media is (and always has been) a central aspect of experimental literature and the strategy of making it new.” (5) Our workshop links these formal considerations to more explicitly political issues.

To see and download the programme of the conference plese visit Workshop: The Political Novel in Europe and the Challenges of the Digital Era.