“Sluts” and “Slaves”: The Internet and the Evolution of Fantasy in Dennis Cooper's Online Work

Abstract

This article explores a yet unresearched part of Dennis Cooper’s production: his blog posts and, in particular, his “Sluts” and “Slaves” monthly posts, where he compiles explicit and sometimes sordid texts and images of gay sex workers apparently found online. First, this paper will situate these blog posts in the fields of citational and online literature, arguing that they are an example of ‘flarf’. In so doing, it also extends the notion of “flarf” from poetry to narrative. Then, this paper explores the continuities and differences between the blog posts and Cooper’s other work, most notably The Sluts (2005), to argue that —while similar in their focus on the internet and “the impossibility of truth”— the blog posts present a significant transformation that compels readers to confront their own desires.

Keywords

• Cooper
• digital iterature
• flarf
• found language
• bugchasing