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The construction of a queer rhizomatic hermeneutics through an exploration of Dennis Cooper's HTML novels
Author(s) -
Barrows Cameron
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/oli.12221
Subject(s) - hermeneutics , reinterpretation , queer , narrative , phenomenology (philosophy) , reading (process) , literature , style (visual arts) , philosophy , queer theory , epistemology , sociology , aesthetics , art , linguistics , gender studies
Dennis Cooper's latest project, a series of HTML novels composed entirely of GIF s, Zac's Haunted House published by Kiddiepunk, showcases the changing literary times and styles. As literature and the Internet become further integrated, our hermeneutical theory and praxis of style must change as well. The influence of the Internet upon the written word is irreversible and has ushered in paradigmatic change. The central question of classical hermeneutics, the relations between writing and the word, and the word to the event has become obfuscated in our digital age. Cooper's HTML novels explicitly play with questions of digital hermeneutics pushing the horizons and perhaps calling for a queer rhizomatic hermeneutics of style. Through his emphasis on structure over narrative, Cooper develops a phenomenology of the digital. Cooper's HTML novel forces the reader to engage in a rhizomatic hermeneutics of the imaginary, that is to say, one must allow the text to develop into multiplicities of worlds, then enter and explore those multiplicities with all the paradoxes and syntheses inherent in them. Cooper's new texts not only question the limits of reading, but also question our hermeneutical methodology and analyses, thus prompting reinterpretation of our understanding of style and its hermeneutical and rhizomatic conceptualizations.