Text v hmotném světě
Text in the material world

The event of writing and Czech literary culture

Summary/Abstract: This study deals with the remediation of the event of writing, which has taken place thanks to the competition between handwriting and typewriting. The first part reflects on the gradual transformation in the technology of writing, while the second follows the way this has been understood in theory (W. Benjamin, J. D. Bolter, V. Flusser, L. Gitelman, A. Goody, C. Haas, F. A. Kittler, M. McLuhan, W. J. Ong and J. Parikka). The study is based on J. D. Bolter’s concept of remediation as a process of cultural competition between technologies. In the process of writing, real time and space become interconnected through the material and the typewriter with the symbolic space of language and ideas. A reason to reflect the cultural aspects of various technologies only arises in situations where it is possible to choose between technologies. The typewriter has made handwriting remote from the author and its external attributes have brought it closer to the printed work, while it has also become an efficient tool for the unification and multiplication of written texts. The aesthetics of the machine has brought with it an awareness that machine-created/ /reproduced print is a medium for the aesthetic function; the typewriter has become an instrument for language games and concepts leading from literature to the visual arts. From the literary studies standpoint what is essential is that the genesis of a literary work involves not only those elements required by intellectual operations, but also technical procedures. Research into literary texts from the standpoint of the technology behind writing presents a new insight into the relationship between the author and the text, and allows us to raise questions over the functional transformations and manifestations of literary subjectivity and the shifts in the genre structure of the literary field.

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