Paper Short Abstract:

Bringing together digital humanities and anthropology, we explore how a small Latin-American-run publisher in Spain expands literature beyond the print book, using digital, audiovisual, and interactive media to diffuse stories of migration and foster relationships between cultural actors.

Paper Abstract:

The primacy of the print book, once the quintessential form associated with “literature” in popular imaginaries, is increasingly being supplanted by digital, audiovisual and interactive media, and publishers are adapting to these shifting patterns of cultural consumption. The “new” formats popular today harken back not only to older artistic forms such as oral and visual storytelling, but also to more primordial modes of sociality, in which cultural actors engage in more direct and dialogical relationships. Yet the current (post)digital reality is not a complete rupture from the textual but rather an expansion, with contemporary literary agents creating digital, audio, and visual materials alongside print books. Similarly, the online and offline communities to which these artistic forms give rise frequently overlap, with publishers, writers, and readers interacting through both digital media and in-person events. To elucidate these dynamics, this paper explores the work of a small publisher in Spain, run by Latin American migrants and dedicated to diffusing stories of migration. Insisting upon the interconnectedness of digital and non-digital spaces, media, and socialities, we bring together methodological tools from digital humanities and anthropology, combining analysis of the publisher’s online materials and interactions – including a podcast, webzine, blog, and social media – with more classic ethnography entailing participant observation and interviews. In so doing, we advocate an expanded notion of what literature is and what it can do, and illustrate how going beyond the print book opens possibilities for both new and old forms of cultural and social engagement.