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Along with providing a fresh, authentic, experimental reading of Bruce Sterling's Distraction, our goal in this project is to take Fuller's notion of the "media ecology" as seriously as possible. That is to say, our methodological goal is not just to reimaginere-imagine but to construct a dynamic apparatus for reimaginingre-imagining the future practice of literary criticism. For Fuller, the concept of the media ecology offers a Deleuzian "line of flight" from the form/content dialectic that has bound writers and scholars to obsoluteobsolete genres. By suggesting that his own book Media Ecologies is at once a book about and an example of a media ecology, Fuller opens the epistemological borders of his print text to the pirate radios and civic light switches (among other non-print texts) he describes. As an electronic document with open borders epistemological and also authorial and technological, let this wiki be a media ecology which has the added capacity to break down the difference between reading and writing. To put it simply: our hope is that reading literary criticism and writing literary criticism might merge in this wiki to become part of a single experience.

As you browse the site, we encourage you to try the following:

  • Create a real or imagined wiki-identity. Although the concept of media ecology and wiki technology both place considerable pressure on traditional notions and operations of what Foucault called "the author function," it here remains necessary to limit "the proliferation of meaning" by means of an "ideological figure" (119): the wiki-identity. In order to fully interact with this site, you will need to create one or more WetPaint logons. And when you do so, take the idea of creation seriously. Imagine your literary critical avatar: project your self, your favorite critic or writer, your favorite theoretical approach, your tone, your good side, your bad side. Better yet, create a hybrid identity. Better still, create several hybrid identities. Allow them to compete for attention, to stage--by creating and engaging threads--the internal debates literary critics have long worked to efface from the readable surfaces of their print essays. On New Criticism from New Media, you cannot be an author, but you can demonstrate how the author function persists in the schizophrenic subconscious of a collaborative text.
  • Take the time to read the threaded discussions. It seems difficult to emphasize this enough. Many of the most important debates on this or any wiki site take place backstage, in the threaded discussions attending wiki pages, rather that in the wiki documents themselves. There, readers who might hesitate to make sweeping changes to a critical argument can still voice their take, or to highlight what their influence might have been in the wiki if they have already made changes. Consider these "threads" supplementary (if less formal) reading whenever you read one of our wiki articles.
  • Break down the difference between theory and practice. The creators of this page, who by launching a work of literary criticism in wiki format are implicitly attempting to cast off the conventional shackles of their discipline, are nevertheless trained literary critics who have developed the habit of separating theory and practice for organizational purposes. Break down these differences whenever possible. Why does a wiki media ecology arguably "about" the Bruce Sterling novel Distraction need to theorize and name itself as such, after all? Why does it have to do so on a separate methodology page? Interrogate these questions. In fact, consider this entire project an attempt to progressively answer these questions by progressively rendering them unaskable.
  • Don't forget style. Although tracking who writes what on a wiki is possible, a better way to read (and/or assert!) a real or imagined wiki-identity is to read for (and/or write!) style. One of the greatest threats to "literary criticism" as a coherent intellectual activity in any medium are the formulas of the discipline that so often put off the very "literary" readers and writers it is ostensibly the project of criticism to comment upon. As a participant In New Criticism from New Media, be engaging. And be engaged. Be dramatic and funny. Be an activist, a poet, and a scholar while reading for activism, poetry, and scholarship.
  • Accordingly, consider, respect, and exploit tonal differences. Unlike some wikis, particularly Wikipedia, a literary criticism wiki--like any highly-specialized, scholarly wiki--will necessarily will have a small audience and therefore a small pool of reader-writer-editors. This inevitably renders the overall tone of the wiki somewhat more various, and the tone of individual pages more stagnant. It also, we suggest, asks users to consider edits more carefully, particularly when it comes to disrupting the tone of an article. As in any wiki situation, there is no one stopping your from changing a critical argument completely. But think hard about the changes you make: what will they highlight, what will they undermine? How subtle can they be and still carry your point? Are they better suited for a thread discussion?
  • Cite your sources. The creators of New Criticism from New Media recognize that a wiki website occupies a liminal space and accordingly must make certain concessions to the same cultural institutions it seeks to critique, and to which it attempts to offer an alternative. Please cite your source in MLA format whenever you use someone else's work, but do so knowing that this "suggestion" can be modified when and if necessary.

Works Cited:

  • Deleuze and Guattari. "Introduction: Rhizome." A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1987. 3-25.
  • Foucault, Michel. "What is an Author?" The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon, 1984.
  • Fuller, Matthew. Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005.
  • Sterling, Bruce. Distraction. New York: Bantam, 1999.