Poetic Inventory: Notes on the Remains of the Human in Literature

Abstract

This essay aims to analyse the electronic fiction text created by Richard Holeton - Frequently Asked Questions About "Hypertext" -, published by N. Katherine Hayles in the Electronic Literature Collection (vol. 1, 2006). As an ironic reference to another parodistic work created by Vladimir Nabokov: Pale Fire (1962), this text provides a rich material for a “posthumanist” reading about the future of poetry as an expression of the human soul. Contrary to what the title suggests, however, Holeton’s text is not presented as an academic essay on digital writing, but as an experimental poem subjected to the quaint approaches of several fictitious critics, practitioners of the analytical lines of the nowadays popular Cultural Studies. The text allows us a humorous reflection on the perturbing directions of reading, writing and the production of knowledge in contemporary world.

Keywords:
Posthumanism; Eletronic Literature; Literary Criticism; Vladimir Nabokov; Richard Holeton