Ex-foliations: Reading Machines and the Upgrade Path

(Paperback)

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A sophisticated consideration of technologies of reading in the digital age. "Every reading is, strictly speaking, unrepeatable; something in it, of it, will vary. Recollections of reading accumulate in relation to this iterable specificity; each takes its predecessors as its foundation, each inflects them with its backward-looking futurity." In Ex-foliations, Terry Harpold investigates paradoxes of reading's backward glances in the theory and literature of the digital field.

Reviews

"Harpolds book provides a useful and interesting argument which can aid us greatly in developing a better understanding of textuality in the new media ecology."Culture Machine

"Terry Harpolds book is in itself a demonstration of one of the messages in this ground-breaking work on the digitization of literature. As he very convincingly argues, it is now time to study the electronic text as a form of visual reading and writing, and in this shift the necessity of folding the e-text back to previous forms of print culture in inescapable."Image & Narrative

"Ex-foliations is a rich compendium that situates current reading practices with a long historical continuum."American Literature

"Ex-foliations is an exploratory book. It aims to draw a map of the early years of the upgrade path, the path of textuality in new media. Harpold takes a much needed polemical stance in saying that scholars must be wary of dominant narratives on this path, with their promises of ever-improving experiences and their quite obvious commercial drives."Culture Machine