We at GlitchLit want to challenge your thinking of conventional literature and in our efforts to do so will be holding a series of short discussions on the topic of experimental literature. Where you take the conversation will determine what we write about in the next journal entry, so take a look at the journal and answer the questions at the end.
A piece of literature can easily be placed into its respective genres and categories upon being read, but when is a piece of writing considered to be 'experimental' and when is it not? This is the fundamental question that has challenged the validity of writing alleged to be experimental. But is experimental literature a definitive genre or style? It seems to lend itself more as a strategy to approaching both the process of writing and interpreting of literature. In any case, it has invaluable resources for any writer to exploit.
Literary genres are not hardwired into our literature; they are fluid and subject to adaptation, change and distortion throughout the years as society, technology and people change. They are also on a spectrum, as Christopher Higgs so excellently puts it for us:
The idea of using a 'literary spectrum' in solving the experimental literature debate is an asset that allows us the freedom to define the criteria for experimental work without labeling works as the definitive for experimental or conventional literature. At one end of the spectrum we have conventional text and at the opposite end, we have experimental text, but there are no absolute examples of either.
We still may not know how to answer 'what is experimental literature,' or 'what is conventional literature,' but we now have somewhere to start by identifying what the spectrum itself consists of. So let's establish that.
1. What is conventional literature?
A Brief Introduction
A piece of literature can easily be placed into its respective genres and categories upon being read, but when is a piece of writing considered to be 'experimental' and when is it not? This is the fundamental question that has challenged the validity of writing alleged to be experimental. But is experimental literature a definitive genre or style? It seems to lend itself more as a strategy to approaching both the process of writing and interpreting of literature. In any case, it has invaluable resources for any writer to exploit.
Literary genres are not hardwired into our literature; they are fluid and subject to adaptation, change and distortion throughout the years as society, technology and people change. They are also on a spectrum, as Christopher Higgs so excellently puts it for us:
I want to be clear: what I have to say is meant to start conversation not conclude conversation. I hope y’all will see that my intention is to be descriptive rather than prescriptive. In other words, I will strive to identify tendencies, not truisms. I don’t believe in truth, I believe in interpretation. Thus, I do not pretend to be right; I only pretend to have ideas worth talking/thinking about.
I think it ill-advised to consider the forces of order and disorder as binary poles on a literary spectrum. Rather, I like to think of them as haecceities periodically conveying various magnitudes of intensity. In other words, as independent forces that push and pull but never settle at a maximum polarization. This means there’s no such thing as “an experimental text” or “a conventional text,” only texts that tend toward experimentation and texts that tend toward convention.
Christopher Higgs — What is Experimental Literature {pt 1}
The idea of using a 'literary spectrum' in solving the experimental literature debate is an asset that allows us the freedom to define the criteria for experimental work without labeling works as the definitive for experimental or conventional literature. At one end of the spectrum we have conventional text and at the opposite end, we have experimental text, but there are no absolute examples of either.
We still may not know how to answer 'what is experimental literature,' or 'what is conventional literature,' but we now have somewhere to start by identifying what the spectrum itself consists of. So let's establish that.