Electronic Literature as Language Game: A Philosophical Approach to Digital Artifact Subjectivity

Abstract

As a theoretical endeavour to interconnect machinic intelligence and literary subjectivity, the present paper discusses implications of a reconfigured understanding of recent digital literary artifacts within the specific frame of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s late philosophy. The first half addresses some of the ways in which a Wittgensteinian inter-subjective model of interaction might apply in the case of selected digital works (Michael Joyce’s Twelve Blue and Judd Morrissey’s The Jew’s Daughter) developed out of aesthetic possibilities specific to digital/computational media. The second half envisions critical consequences of reframing literary negotiations in terms of Wittgensteinian ”˜language games’ for second-generation works of electronic literature.