Short Abstract:

Writing is no longer central. Digital technologies and video platforms shift us back toward an oral-visual culture. 'Unwriting Cultures' explores how podcasts, vlogs, and social media reshape knowledge, challenge the authority of text, and reconfigure epistemic frameworks in the digital age.

Long Abstract:

In its ordinary sense, writing seems no longer to be the most important of all human technological inventions, as Ong Walter (1982) once stated. In the Tik-Tok era, writing became once again a mere appendage of speech. At the same time, a new sensory world, that of sight, is enhancing speech and affecting thought as well. Music, speech and image are once again entangled (Havelock 2019) reminding us of ancient Greece, as we look back in history from the peak of our technological development.

Much like the historical shift from oral to written culture, we now observe a reverse trajectory. The written word, for a long time central in human societies, is being challenged by the immediacy and virality of oral and visual content. This shift questions how knowledge is re-made, validated, and consumed, and how new "epistemic cultures" (Knorr-Cetina 1999) emerge.

We are witnessing these profound transformations, driven by the expansion of digital technologies and video communication, but in the same time, we ask how new forms of knowledge are constructed, transmitted and established.

Drawing on STS and anthropological scholarship, this panel on 'Unwriting Cultures' examines how contemporary audiovisual platforms—such as podcasts, vlogs, and social media—are reshaping our relationship with writing. We invite scholars to explore how these platforms challenge previous epistemological frameworks, reconfigure power and knowledge relations, and test the linear narratives of modernity and technological development.

This Panel has so far received 3 paper proposal(s).
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