Homo Irretitus in the 20th and 21st Century Literary Culture

CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies ISSN 2299-906X ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12) The Archetypes of Cyberspace www.CyberEmpathy.com

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MAGDALENA KEMPNA-PIENIĄŻEK

Homo Irretitus in the 20th and 21st Century Literary Culture (book review)

http://www.cyberempathy.com/


Magdalena Kempna-Pieniążek

Literature – new media. Homo Irretitus in the 20th and 21st

Century Literary Culture (Homo irretitus w kulturze

literackiej XX i XXI wieku) by Bogusława Bodzioch-Bryła,

Grażyna Pietruszewska-Kobiela and Adam Regiewicz

(book review)

Abstract:

The book by Bogusława Bodzioch-Bryła, Grażyna Pietruszewska-Kobiela and Adam Regiewicz, which is published as the third volume of the series Audiovisual Aspects of Culture in Postmodernity, combines qualities of a compendium of knowledge on media circumstances accompanying the evolution of literature and of a collection of interpretations directing the reader’s attention to concrete realisations of contemporary artistic trends. This perspective leads the authors to synthesise tropes derived from media studies and literary studies in order to discover tools which would be effective in analysing hybrid forms emerging in the dynamically transforming area of the borderland between the art of words and the art of new media. What is more, the volume calls for such type of literary research which would closely connect it with cultural studies. Tags: Audiovisual Culture, Postmodernism, Literature, E-Literature, Media,

MAGDALENA KEMPNA-PIENIĄŻEK Doctor of Humanities in the field of Literary studies and an

assistant professor in the Department of Film Studies and

Media at the Faculty of Languages at the University of

Silesia in Katowice. Previously, he was a graduate of the

Interdepartmental Individual Studies in the Humanities ,

University of Silesia (Polish philology , cultural studies ) .

Author of many books and articles .



Homo irretitus goes to a (virtual) library

Reading the work by Bogusława Bodzioch-Bryła, Grażyna Pietruszewska-

Kobiela and Adam Regiewicz is a real challenge. And it is not only due to the

monumental size of the publication, being the third volume of the series

Audiovisual Aspects of Culture in Postmodernity, but also due to the density

of its texts and contexts. Literature – new media. Homo Irretitus in the 20th

and 21st Century Literary Culture is a book which wants to be both a

compendium of knowledge about the media circumstances in which

contemporary literature (and poetry in particular) evolved (and continues to

evolve) as well as a collection of interpretations which direct the attention of

the reader to particular realisations of artistic currents that come to life at the

interface of the word and the image, the body and the machine, sight and

hearing (not to mention other senses).

The complexity of the project and its guiding ambitions put the critic in a

difficult position. Multiplicity of the issues touched upon by the authors

(cyberculture, e-liberature, net art, mail art, convergence, liternet, cybernetic,

digital and visual poetry, Perfokarta, ergodicity, immersion, interactivity,

interfaces, intermediality, virtuality and many other) makes it impossible to

refer to all of them, or even most of them, in this review. On the other hand,

the overwhelming size of footnotes related to the whole range of issues makes

it virtually impossible to read the book in a fully attentive way and without

being disturbed by secondary threads. Thus, the recipients of Homo Irretitus

should perhaps ask themselves a question on how to read the work so as not to

miss any of its assets. This doubt can be dispelled in a few ways.



Reading from the middle

As an expert on culture with a strong inclination for film studies, I only begin

to engage myself in reading Homo Irretitus around page 200. The first two

parts (Homo irretitus – an overview of contexts and Narratives –

audiovisuality – new media) bring to mind concepts and categories which

provide background for the threads discussed in part three (Ars poetica or @-

poetica. About poetry using new carriers) and fourth (The image of literature

and books/the image from literature and books). The long theoretical and

historical “run-up” is a peculiar compendium of media studies under the

auspices of: Marshall McLuhan, Henry Jenkins, Lev Manovich – to mention

only the most important ones. The compendium is unique as it emphasises

“transformations at the interface of the art of the word and new media” (p.58)

with an emphasis on, needless to say, the art of the word.

A media expert could say nihil novi, breathing a sigh when forcing through the

massive (by the way, earnestly constructed) references. Work performed by the

authors has hallmarks of a titanic effort. The initial parts provide a summary of

knowledge and refer the reader to canonical texts and categories in media as

well as literature studies. Due to the attempt at covering so many issues on two

hundred densely printed pages one reads particular chapters as if they were

complex encyclopedic entries (the form is even evoked by titles given to

subchapters: Literature on the TV screen, Cybernetic novel, Hypertextual

novel, Blogosphere…), in which literary works are often mentioned in the same

breath without information about their content.



Two subsequent parts of the book oscillate around interpretation of selected

phenomena at the interface of the word and new media art. The parts contain

not only titles but also quotations from various works, whereas particular

threads are subjected to a detailed analysis. The works by Joanna Mueller,

Zenon Fajfer, Roman Bromoszcz or Łukasz Podgórni become symbols of

changes related to the current understanding of literature and its place within

new media art. What is more, both parts have been supplemented with a

varied and attractively presented graphic material which enables a more

careful tracing of interpretation of subsequent works.

The world presented by the authors of these fragments is a complex and

fascinating one. The analyses by Bogusława Bodzioch-Bryła of the works by

Zenon Fajfer, Roman Bromboszcz or Łukasz Podgórni reveal a new dimension

of contemporary poetry with its characteristic reconfiguration of the

palimpsest concept. When confronted with the work Matko zawrotna by

Podgórni, the work lunago by Joanna Mueller (as well as its multimedia

adaptations) in the interpretation by Grażyna Pietruszewska-Kobiela becomes

the motivation to reflect upon the fact that “the cybernetic dimension which

has influence on the psychic sphere of life brought about changes in spiritual

life. This is because a contemporary man often moves into a virtual dimension

(...) and religious values have also been moved into this dimension” (p.355) All

this constitutes only a fragment of a wide spectrum of phenomena evoked by

the authors who did not stay indifferent to such original endeavours as Screen

by Noah Wadrip-Fruin, projects by Perfokarta (including a digital version of

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki) or making use of the QR

codes idea in the works by Andrzej Głowacki. Readers planning their journey



into the borderlands of literature and other media may treat Homo Irretitus as

a carefully prepared guide on the territories.

From the beginning

As an educator I go back to the initial parts of the book where literary studies

meet media studies. Homo Irretitus can probably be used as an academic

textbook during classes devoted to intermediality in culture, borderlands of

media or literary communication. The layout of content is transparent and its

substantive value is undeniable. In this respect nothing can actually be

imputed to the authors – minor faults such as the one on page 193, where the

authorship of film adaptation of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) is

assigned to Tim Burton (whereas the film was directed by Timur

Bekmambetov), are insignificant, so are the occasional misprints which are

probably unavoidable in such an extensive publication (on page 376 Ezra

Pound became “Ezra Paund”).

A brief summary of the covered issues located at the end of each section

facilitates orientation and navigation in the book. Homo Irretitus is

undoubtedly a publication worth recommending to students who want to

organise their knowledge about the interface of word art and other media, and

to learn practical possibilities of operationalisation of media studies categories

in the research on the contemporary shape of culture.

As expected of an honest academic textbook Homo Irretitus also includes a

carefully developed name index and – what is particularly valuable in the case



of a book so rich in content – an index of terms. The publication is completed

by a bibliography containing 610 entries which makes the reader realise the

enormity of work performed by the authors. All of the above mentioned

additions make the book a handy tool in teaching, however, in the case of the

first two parts, rather in teaching literature than media. Owing to literature-

centred perspective adopted by the authors, the two parts – at least in some

aspects – may offer too many simplifications to media researchers. For

instance, the one present on page 102 which states that “feature cinema begins

with David Griffith’s works” (a film historian would rather say that Griffith’s

works mark the beginning of the narrative integrity cinema; the plot had

already existed even in Georges Méliès’ phantasmagories which are inscribed

in the paradigm of the cinema of attraction).

From the end?

The back cover of Homo Irretitus recalls one more aspect of the project

undertaken by the authors. A short note describes the book as “a kind of

instruction guiding (in macro- and microscale) how to »be oriented« in

hypertextual borderlands of »words and media, spirit and machine«”. Indeed:

the problem of the method is one of the recurrent issues which emerge through

the authors’ reflections. From time to time it actually takes the form of a

directly thematised reflection on both literary studies – facing the fact that “the

century ceased to communicate and learn about the world by means of books

giving way to mass media” (p. 200) – and more general difficulties connected

with searching for tools which would be adequate for the hybrid, inconstant

and often simply undefined matter of the works discussed in the book.



Despite these concerns the authors do not display any signs of methodological

confusion. The perspective chosen in Homo Irretitus makes them prone to

synthesising tropes from media studies and literary studies. The clash of these

disciplines reveals their significant weaknesses – they can be observed in

confrontation with works requiring intricate analyses, for example those by

Zenon Fajfer and Roman Bromboszcz. On the one hand, as it turns out, media

studies tend to appropriate the phenomena discussed in the book in the area of

new media at the expense of a textual element (Bogusława Bodzioch-Bryła

presents this problem using the example of an interpretation, or rather an

under-interpretation of the Text Rain installation in Ryszard Kluszczyński’s

Interactive Art. From Artwork-Instrument to Interactive Spectacle, p. 313).

On the other hand, however, placing such artworks by literary studies “solely

in the context of digital poetry results (...) in reduction of the sphere connected

with other important components of the artwork” (p. 316). In this context

Homo Irretitus can also be understood as a call for proper recognition of

interdisciplinary studies of phenomena which are in themselves – for a

number of reasons – located in the “inter” spaces.

The authors do not hide the fact that the perspective of literary studies is closer

to them than the one of media studies. They even introduce film theory by

referring to concepts stemming from research on literature and language, such

as Roman Jakobson’s or Roman Ingarden’s theories. It is no coincidence that

in the field of film studies the concept of a camera pen by Alexandre Astruc

seems to appeal to them strongly and in the sphere of film semiotics – slightly

controversial (who actually still believes in the possibility to describe film

language by analogy to natural language?) theories by Seweryna Wysłouch



(regretfully not by Christian Metz). In the scope of film adaptation they prefer

Maryla Hopfinger’s proposals to Alicja Helman’s or Brian McFarlane’s

(although the latter authors are quoted).

It is clear that the authors of the book set off from literary studies to

“poaching” trips to the terrain of media studies in search of a new method or

ways to reconfigure old methods to help them reflect the nature of changes

taking place in contemporary culture. The search is motivated by a crucial and

relevant diagnosis of the fact that “changes caused by new technologies gave

rise to homo irretitus living in two worlds – a real one in which they support

themselves by means of technical and technological novelties, and a virtual

one, in which they are much more dependent on the novelties” (p. 32). Thus,

on one of the deeper levels, the book by Bodzioch-Bryła, Pietruszewska-

Kobiela and Regiewicz also demonstrates ambitions of anthropological nature

trying to give account of the state of contemporary culture in which: “A human

being develops new media, introduces various innovative solutions, at the

same time they shape his/her mind, axiology, they affect the way of perceiving

the world” (p. 47).

The authors are particularly interested in relations between senders and

recipients of texts, which become complex in the face of “difficulties not as

much with separating important bits of information from the unimportant

ones, but with extracting valuable content from the content which is of less

importance for a literary scientist (a cultural scientist), with extracting literary

phenomena from phenomena of sociological nature, and with extracting

phenomena generating aesthetic meanings from all of the phenomena



mentioned above” (p. 43). The words “a literary scientist (a cultural scientist)”

are worth noting in the quoted fragment. In fact, Homo Irretitus is a book

which calls for such a shape of literary research which would be closely

connected with cultural studies. In the circumstances of increasing

specialisation of scientific disciplines the authors remind us of the cultural

aspect of literary studies which is today, unfortunately, probably underrated.

***

In the opening part of the volume the authors quote a proverb related to the

oral culture: “When an old person dies, a library burns to the ground” (p.13).

In the days of the expansion of digitality and social media we would rather say

that when a man is born, a new library comes into being – a library composed

of commonly shared photos, videos, links and tags, the whole cloud of

audiovisual things surrounding every representative of the homo irretitus

species from the very first moments of their existence. The book by Bodzioch-

Bryła, Pietruszewska-Kobiela and Regiewicz presents plenty of aspects of our

functioning in the world composed of these more or less virtual libraries.

However, first and foremost, it poses questions about navigating through them

in a fully conscious way. The answers the book gives to the questions – despite

its impressive bulk – are not comprehensive, of course. And it is fortunate that

they are not because understatements and doubts reveal areas awaiting new

recognition.



Magdalena Kempna-Pieniążek

Literature – new media. Homo Irretitus in the 20th and 21st Century

Literary Culture (Homo irretitus w kulturze literackiej XX i XXI wieku)

by Bogusława Bodzioch-Bryła, Grażyna Pietruszewska-Kobiela and Adam

Regiewicz

CyberEmpathy - Visual Communication Studies Journal

ISSUE 1 / 2016 (12). The Archetypes of Cyberspace.

ISSN 2299-906X. Marika Wato.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web: www.CyberEmpathy.com



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Homo Irretitus in the 20th and 21st Century Literary Culture