Electronic Literature as Language Game: A Philosophical Approach to Digital Artifact Subjectivity

As a theoretical endeavour to interconnect machinic intelligence and literary subjectivity, the present paper discusses implications of a reconfigured understanding of recent digital literary artifacts within the specific frame of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s late philosophy. The first half addresses some of the ways in which a Wittgensteinian inter-subjective model of interaction might apply in the case of selected digital works (Michael Joyce’s Twelve Blue and Judd Morrissey’s The Jew’s Daughter ) developed out of aesthetic possibilities specific to digital/computational media. The second half envisions critical consequences of reframing literary negotiations in terms of Wittgensteinian ”˜language games’ for second-generation works of electronic literature.