Multiplicity and participation practices: The problem of authorship and reading literature in digital media

Abstract

The avant-gardes of the beginning of the 20th century and the artworks influenced by them contributed to modern literary creation to elaborate an anti-lyrical side and averse to the excessive link with authorial subjectivity. In the theoretical field, the reflections of Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault were essential to reflect the idea that the author does not precede the text but is created along with it. From the mid-1990s onwards, when personal computers and the internet expanded their audience, digital culture led the literary universe to an expansion aimed at fragmented and participatory authorial configurations, as well as an expansion of the collaborative demands of the reader. In this article, we think about changes in the roles of the author and the reader in the face of texts in the digital environment, which we call collaborative multiplicity.