what does technology mean for literature?

Looking over my last four posts, I wonder, what does this all mean for literature?

While talking to a friend about this series of posts he laughed and said, "so, you are saying our literature is OMG !!!11!! ?"  In a way, yes.  There's no avoiding that abbreviation-filled MySpace posts do in fact represent a large chunk of the American population.  Before the internet, this chunk wasn't represented in national literature because, well, no one was jumping to publish the angsty ramblings of teenagers.  Or at least not of actual teenagers.

And this brings up the problem of national literature as a whole.  National literature, up until now, has been unable to represent the voices of the population as a whole.  Only the voices of the published are heard, and those voices are generally not of children, teenagers, the poor, the disadvantaged, the people who are focused on surviving or growing up instead of sitting around writing about it.  The idea is that true national literature reflects the consciousness of the population as a whole.  But does it really?  Can we really claim to understand a nation without listening to all its voices?

This is not a new issue in literature.  But I think that the democratization/decentralization of literature/publishing will force the issue among scholars.  Was national literature ever really that national to begin with?

The decentralization of publishing allows us the opportunity to hear more and more voices for different segments of the population.  Sure, not everyone is still represented and not every segment will necessarily choose to represent themselves, but universal representation is far closer than it has ever been before.  But is that really good for literature?  Is that really a truer national literature?  Is it better to recognize the talented few who can crystallize the heart of a nation in the stroke of a pen, or is it better to recognize as many colors in the rainbow as possible?

This in particular is not a new debate--think for a second about the debate over affirmative action and I think you will see the parallels.  Think about the debate over multicultural education.

There are no quick or easy answers, and I suspect the debate will fuel upheaval over the next generations within literature departments across the world.  Because if we're really seeking out the texts that define culture and if we're really seeking out culture through texts, we have to go where the texts are.  Comparative literature values what a text says about culture above the subjective aesthetic value of the text, so why not OMG !!!11!! ?  I don't have answers here, but I do believe that dealing with technology and incorporating it into literary study is really just a matter of honesty.