Remediating Print Culture: Reactions to the Digital Revolution in Facsímil (2014), El sistema del tacto (2018), Scout (2016) and Leñador (2013)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to read four works from the recent Chilean literary field as a series of reflections on print culture. These novels start from the premise that print has been profoundly affected by the digital revolution. In the first part of the article, I develop a theoretical model to understand the effect of digital on print based on the concepts of remediation, materiality, and practices of print culture. I propose that the digital revolution produced a liberation and tension in the printed culture that the four novels I study reflect, and they do so from the questioning of the functions that print has historically had. Facsímil (2014), El sistema del tacto (2018), Scout and Leñador, are novels aware of their status as a physical object, and therefore use their materiality to reflect, intervene and comment on the role printed book plays in the contemporary world. The article seeks to show that printed culture in Chile is in a moment of paradigmatic change and that literature is an exceptional starting point to understand it.

Keywords

• cultura impresa
• revolución digital
• novela chilena
• remediación