Archival Genres: Gathering Texts and Reading Spaces

Kate Eichhorn
© 2008

Abstract:

While digital poetry and fiction remain marginal genres primarily of interest to scholars of digital textuality, millions of readers are exploring blogs and other social networking forms or forums. But do they represent new genres, collections or archives, or social spaces? This article maintains that like the commonplace books that were popular with Renaissance readers, blogs and related social networking forms are types of “archival genres.” Understood as collections, systems of information management, and social spaces, archival genres not only reflect archival practices (collecting and ordering) but also represent spaces of enunciation where new genres develop.