Designing Literature

For discussion during class on Monday, September 14th:

It’s true: In this class, we’re collectively composing a digital book (or an e-book, if you prefer).  And given that the book will be situated—in some way—around the question of why design is currently relevant to literature, something like A Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0 gives us plenty of thought fodder.

First off, what did you think of the manifesto? How did it strike you?  Its strategically essentialist claims?  The language it uses?  Its two versions?

More specifically, let’s explore these questions, from paragraph 41:

What does it mean to study “literature” or “history” when print is no longer the normative medium in which literary or historical artifacts are produced, let alone analyzed? What does it mean to think when thinking is decoupled from its exclusive reliance upon language and textuality? What does it mean, more generally, for humanistic knowledge?

Note that, in a sense, these print-oriented concerns are echoed by Sterling, explicitly in #2 of his list of “Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature” (a more accurate title for which might be “Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Print Literature”).

Let’s also attend to this line from the manifesto:

we are advocating for a neo- or post-print model where print becomes embedded within a multiplicity of media practices and forms of knowledge production.

What is a “multiplicity of media practices”?  What are the implications of a neo- or post-print model on the production of a digital book about literature (broadly understood)?

More basically, why does design matter anyway?  What do we think it is, especially in terms of what we do?  Related to the manifesto, what does design have to do with a “theory . . . anchored in MAKING”?

As we discuss (and for the balance of the semester), we’ll want to keep in mind Drucker’s and McVarish’s critical principles of design.  For instance, I’m thinking that these two—“Technology is not determinant” and “Communication is a dynamic system”—might be relevant to today’s meeting.

Oh, per that reference in the manifesto and just in case you’re curious who, exactly, Shepard Fairey is…