Um estudo sobre arquivos de literatura digital: sistema literário e legitimação

Abstract

In the contemporary era of overwhelming informational production (ROCHA, 2023), preserving digital culture poses a significant challenge. Digital productions, particularly within the realm of literature, often teeter on the “verge of disappearance” (BEIGUELMAN, 2014). In response to this threat, archives have played a vital role in attempting to safeguard digital literature from erasure. Often, digital literature archives have actively engaged in mapping, selecting, and systematically making available both artistic and critical works. With this in mind, this study aims to investigate three different archives: i. Electronic Literature Organization (1999), based in the United States of America, ii. Observatório de Literatura Digital Brasileira (2019), developed in Brazil, and iii. Ciberia Project (2014), based in Spain. Given the assumption that a digital literary system is currently in development (ROCHA, 2023), our hypothesis posits that the archives under examination serve as the principal institutional territories of digital literature. They play a central role in facilitating the circulation and consolidation of a comprehensive repertoire on this subject. Thus, this research seeks to comprehend the operating principles of these archives, which play a crucial role in preserving cultural and literary memory. To achieve this, we adopt a systemic perspective of literature (EVEN-ZOHAR, 2017) to study the specific characteristics of each archive while acknowledging the diverse and intricate relationships between them. For our investigation, we employ the literary factors scheme (EVEN-ZOHAR, 2017) as the research methodology, supplemented by the descriptive approach (CANCLINI, 2016). By studying the norms governing these archives, we delineate their distinct characteristics, thus revealing the potential impact of archival actions on the digital literary system. Consequently, we recognize that these archives may offer distinct perspectives on how to interpret the digital literature – a subject still in development (SALGADO, 2020) – stored within them.