Stories of Blogs, E-books and Time: Slowdown, Participation and Resistance in Wu Ming’s Giap and <i>L’archivio e la strada</i>

This paper analyses the relationship between Wu Ming’s blog Giap and the e-book Giap: L’archivio e la strada, where the writing collective gathered a selection of blog posts published between 2010 and 2012. Focusing on the temporal dimension of on-line and off-line reading practices, this paper demonstrates that the transmedia transfer of content from the blog to the e-book—a hybrid medium available both on-line and off-line—affects the experience of the reader offering an alternative reading rhythm, slowing it down and engendering a more thoughtful and critical approach to its content. The focus on the temporal dimension of reading practices must be framed into Wu Ming’s cultural project, primarily aimed at sabotaging and undermining the rhythm of life, production, and consumption imposed by Capitalism. As part of this project, the blog Giap promotes practices of resistance to the commodification of cultural products and impulsive forms of content consumption. In particular, the content available on Giap is protected by copy-left policies, while the comments to its most thoughtful posts are blocked until seventy-two hours after their publication. The transmedia transfer of posts from the blog to the e-book reorders their sequence, establishes a different relationship between reader and content and encourages the latter to reflect on the texts within a restructured temporal dimension. The publication of the e-book therefore represents a further form of slowdown that brings about the possibility of an alternative to on-line impulsive reading practices, bridges on-line and off-line dimensions, tackles issues of accessibility and preserves its content from on-line dispersive fluxes.