[ISEA2011] Panel: Davin Heck­man – Tag­ging Prac­tices and the Dis­turbed Di­alec­tic of Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism

Panel Statement

Panel: Zones of Contact and Fields of Consistency in Electronic Literature

This paper will dis­cuss the re­la­tion­ship be­tween speed and lit­er­ary crit­i­cism in the age of new media.  Specif­i­cally, this paper will ex­plore the dual metaphor of the “tag” as an of­fi­cial con­sumer label and an un­der­ground art form, and the pro­duc­tive ten­sion that ex­ists when both forms exist within the same urban space.  Using this metaphor to dis­cuss tra­di­tional ter­mi­nolo­gies and folk­son­omy as forms of “tag­ging” that can cre­ate pro­duc­tive ten­sion within data­base pro­jects like the Elec­tronic Lit­er­a­ture Di­rec­tory, I will con­clude with a call for at­ten­tive­ness that can push both ca­sual read­ers and con­ser­v­a­tive schol­ars to­wards crit­i­cism that is tech­no­log­i­cally ap­pro­pri­ate, eth­i­cally en­gaged, and cul­tur­ally vital.

  • Davin Heck­man is the au­thor of A Small World: Smart Houses and the Dream of the Per­fect Day (Duke UP, 2008).  He is Su­per­vis­ing Ed­i­tor of the Elec­tronic Lit­er­a­ture Di­rec­tory and As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Siena Heights Uni­ver­sity, where he teaches courses in writ­ing, lit­er­a­ture, and media stud­ies.  In 2011, he was se­lected as a Ful­bright Scholar in dig­i­tal cul­ture at the Uni­ver­sity of Bergen, N. directory.eliterature.org

Full text (PDF) p. 1162-1166