Literature and the Telephone

Literature and the Telephone explores the ways that the telephone taps into the operations of reading and writing, opening up our understanding of how, where and why literary communication takes place. Addressing the telephone''s complex, multiple and mutating functions, and drawing on recent work by writers and thinkers including Sara Ahmed, Stacy Alaimo, Judith Butler, Nicholas Royle and Eyal Weizman, this open access book considers the linguistic, technical and conceptual disruptions of the literary telephone as well as the poetic and political possibilities of the exchange. Focusing on the telephonic effects of post-war writing by authors such as Mourid Barghouti, Caroline Bergvall, Tom Raworth, Muriel Spark, Ali Smith and Rita Wong, Sarah Jackson proposes that the uncanny logic of the telephone, and its capacity for ordering and disordering the text, speaks to some of the most urgent concerns of our era. Examining topics ranging from surveillance and migration to warfare and electronic waste, Jackson argues that the literary telephone offers new ways of conceiving ethical and creative technological futures, as well as different modes of reading, writing and listening across cultures. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Nottingham Trent University.

Préface
Constituting the first major study of the relationship between literature and telephony from 1945 to the present day, this book examines the impact of the telephone's complex, multiple and mutating functions on transcultural communication systems.

Auteur
Sarah Jackson is Associate Professor in Modern and Contemporary Writing at Nottingham Trent University, UK. She is a BBC New Generation Thinker (2016), AHRC Leadership Fellow (2018-­-2020) and NTU VC Outstanding Researcher (2017). Her publications include Tactile Poetics (2015), Pelt (2012), and a special issue of parallax on the 'unidentifiable literary object' (2019).

Texte du rabat

"Taking the 'question of literature' as its starting point, this open access book addresses the telephone's propensity to mediate but also to interrupt communication, as well as the ways in which it taps into some of the most urgent concerns of the modern and contemporary age, includilng surveillance, mobility, globalization and the ethics of answerability. In so doing, it provides a fascinating look at how the telephone has been shaping literature and culture from the early twentieth century to the present. Exploring its complex, multiple and mutating functions in literary texts from 1945 to the present day, this book examines the ways that the telephone ignites new conversations between different historical periods, global locations, theoretical perspectives and creative and critical voices, examining issues as from the role of operators to secrecy and information technology to queer conversations and telephones as waste. Although focusing on post-1945 writers such as Will Self, Haruki Murakami, Jon McGregor, Frank O'Hara, Muriel Spark, Graham Greene and Behrouz Boochani, it also touches on work from earlier writers such as Mark Twain, Marcel Proust, Robert Frost, James Joyce, Evelyn Waugh, and Dorothy Sayers. Addressing the reciprocal relationship between telephony and literary language and form, it considers both historical and recent manifestations of the telephone, and its capacity to call across borders, languages and cultures. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Nottingham Trent University"--

Résumé

Literature and the Telephone explores the ways that the telephone taps into the operations of reading and writing, opening up our understanding of how, where and why literary communication takes place.

Addressing the telephone's complex, multiple and mutating functions, and drawing on recent work by writers and thinkers including Sara Ahmed, Stacy Alaimo, Judith Butler, Nicholas Royle and Eyal Weizman, this open access book considers the linguistic, technical and conceptual disruptions of the literary telephone as well as the poetic and political possibilities of the exchange.

Focusing on the telephonic effects of post-war writing by authors such as Mourid Barghouti, Caroline Bergvall, Tom Raworth, Muriel Spark, Ali Smith and Rita Wong, Sarah Jackson proposes that the uncanny logic of the telephone, and its capacity for ordering and disordering the text, speaks to some of the most urgent concerns of our era.

Examining topics ranging from surveillance and migration to warfare and electronic waste, Jackson argues that the literary telephone offers new ways of conceiving ethical and creative technological futures, as well as different modes of reading, writing and listening across cultures.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Nottingham Trent University.

Contenu

Preface: Hello, yes? Introduction Switchboard
Chapter 1 Queer Lines: Voice and Desire in E. M. Forster, Dana Spiotta and Haruki Murakami
Chapter 2 Scrambled Messages: Networks of Signification in Patrick Hamilton and Jon McGregor
Chapter 3 Telepoetics: Interference and Errancy in Frank O'Hara, Tom Raworth and Fady Joudah
Chapter 4 Secrets: Call and Response in Muriel Spark
Chapter 5 Listening-­-In: Reading Surveillance in Graham Greene, Anna Burns and Will Self
Chapter 6 Calling without Calling: Mourid Barghouti, Jacques Derrida and 'The International Day of Telephones'
Chapter 7 Distress Calls: New (Im)mobilities in Behrouz Boochani and Asiya Wadud
Conclusion Telefutures: Electronic Waste in Emily St John Mandel and Ling Ma
Afterword The Long Goodbye
Bibliography