When I began writing this blog in the beginning of February, I had a main theme in mind - illusions and their relationship with the illusory nature of human desire. So far I've approximated a discussion on this topic; there appears to be a new muse, however, that brought this back to the forefront for me.

I just finished reading an essay by Tom Eyers ("The Perils of Digital Humanities") on how the Digital in Digital Humanities breaks down older structures of the expression of thought, rebuilding them within an epistemology of the shallow and objectified. The author's voice in such an environment becomes less important than the medium of communication, rendering depth of expression all but mute and the all-important sign an empty referential shell.

The fear for someone like me, of course, is that I find nothing really wrong with publishing in an on-line medium. In fact, I have several journal articles in peer-reviewed / refereed on-line journals. I have also placed poems of my own on Facebook (not for review, obviously, but to share some of my poetry with others) and have even created a site for students and faculty at my institution to publish poems upon a editorial review process. As such, I need to ask - if the on-line experience is one of objectification and superficiality, have I not just fallen into its trap? Is this work, my own and that of countless others, now nothing more than a mass of data lost in a sea of Warhol soup cans pulled from images.yahoo?

Berg Nascimento's poem "Pulsando" hurls us into such a world in rather direct terms:

Ainda vivo:
na selva que antes era de pedra
e agora se tornou digital.

Ainda vivo:
no meio do caos diário
que só pertence a mim.

Ainda vivo:
catando palavras no espaço
e as embalsamando neste vidro.
(http://poesiasciberneticas.blogspot.com/, accessed 23 February, 2014)


Nascimento's act of entrapment is that of pathetic fallacy - the words captured and "embalmed" are actually the objects from which the poetic voice is constructed. The poem in this sense becomes almost mystical; the point of union between the creator and the created is finite and visible only to a poetic subject whose own subjectivity and divinity we inherently question. Such a vast space of postmodernity cannot lead us to the salvation of the "rock" from the first stanza, as that rock is of a world which no longer exists.


Is it right, then, for me to continue working in an on-line medium, one in which my own voice may fall deaf to itself for simple lack of importance vis-à-vis the space it inhabits? Is the act of dissemination one of self-intolerance, or simple masochism? I invite you to decide. In the meantime, I wish you


good night / buenas noches / boa noite!