Frankenstein’s Monster Comes Home: The ‘Two Cultures’ in Remix

Just published in Authorship Vol. 2 No. 2 (2013) is a piece by me, Frankenstein’s Monster Comes Home: The ‘Two Cultures’ in Remix

Abstract

Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (1818) is the starting point for this reading of remix in relation to authorship and its implications for creative work. The monster in Frankenstein has no single author, or father, and is damned by his mixed parentage as much as by his inability to recreate himself. Alone, he falls into the waste as a product of the divide between poetry and science. The ‘two cultures’ coined by C. P. Snow (1956) address this same divide and lament its dominance in mid twentieth-century intellectual life. But contemporary remix culture that relies on digital media closes this gap as poets now write code and artists are technicians. In my close reading of five remixes I show that origin is no longer relevant in the mixed material realization of processes that are performed or ‘re-authored’ in reception. In these remixes the creator reinterprets by changing the context of remixed elements in the works. The result is textual hybrids that are remixed further in reception.

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And from the Editors:

This issue contains a very interesting special topics section on "Remix
in Authorship" which is guest-edited by Nelleke Moser of VU University
Amsterdam, and which comes out of a seminar held there exactly two years
ago today. The issue also includes an article on periodical culture in
1920s Argentina by Geraldine Rogers, and our very first review.

If you or someone you know might be interested in reviewing, or if you
have a book for review, please contact
journalmanager.authorship@ugent.be. Lisa Walters of UGent will be
handling our correspondence on reviewing.

As always, my particular thanks go to Jasper Schelstraete for carrying
out the technical duties associated with an online journal; to Gert
Buelens for serving as our chief editor; to everyone who graciously
agreed to peer review these articles; and especially to our contributors
and guest editor.

We are always looking for new, quality submissions; please pass the word
to anyone with relevant material! We will continue to publish twice
yearly; our next issue, which will include some of the keynotes from
UGent's Reconfiguring Authorship conference last fall, will likely be
out in a few more months.