Abstract
In the introduction to their rich edited volume, Miriam Llamas Ubieto and Johanna Vollmeyer hypothesize that cultural recycling “is a notion that inherently implies time and memory (repetition, iteration, and dissemination) as well as movement (circulation)” (p. 8). To recycle a cultural product means not just reusing what is there, but also adding meaning to it, and thereby keeping it alive in an inherently abundant digital culture. Therefore, they argue, a theory of cultural recycling goes beyond established notions such as intertextuality, adaptation, appropriation, hypertextuality, transmedia, remix, and convergence. They define postdigital recycling as “a processing action on a used material, waste, or product that implies its detachment from its initial context and its subsequent return to a new life cycle in ways affected by the postdigital condition” (p. 8). Aiming to bridge media studies, cultural studies, and literary studies, they assert that this novel conceptualization is necessary in order to study how cultural content is put into use again, reused, and relived, ranging from memes to algorithmically (re)generated (audiovisual) texts.
This is an ambitious endeavor, which is reflected in the way the book is structured. The first chapter (by Llamas Ubieto) unpacks, historicizes and builds the theoretical framework of postdigital cultural recycling. The chapter is long (almost 70 pages) and packed with references (11 pages) and footnotes (90 in total). It is clearly the book’s theoretical heart, shaping the case study chapters that follow it. Readers might particularly enjoy Llamas Ubieto’s historical and etymological exploration of the term recycling (reminiscent of Raymond Williams’ (2014 [1976]) classical Keywords, although less political) and why it is productive to bring the term back into the theoretical lexicon to scrutinize contemporary cultural practices. The chapter also makes clear what is meant by the postdigital: a state that is simultaneously a consequence and part of an ongoing digital revolution (p. 22). Fundamentally, Llamas Ubieto argues that cultural recycling allows researchers to “observe the temporal event it promotes, and at the same time, interrupts the constant circulation of materials” (p. 62). That is, postdigital cultural recycling describes a practice in which the new is infused with the pre-existing and vice versa.
Readers with a background in the fields of media, cultural, and literary studies will recognize the chapter’s many allusions and critiques. For those outside these fields, the chapter might be challenging and feel convoluted. At times, I, someone trained in those disciplines, wondered if the ideas and arguments in this chapter would have deserved their own, standalone monograph. The chapter then could have expanded further on the actual epistemological differences between, for example, postdigital cultural recycling and cybernetic feedback loops. This is briefly discussed, but there is more theoretical potential here than is realized. A discussion of cybernetics could have moved into a discussion of the work on “algorithmic culture,” for example. Moreover, a number of key thinkers are now absent from the discussion. Alvin Toffler’s (1971) ideas on “prosumers” and Axel Bruns’s (2008) on “produsers” are not discussed, while a point is made that, in digital culture, everyone is simultaneously producer and consumer. In addition, Mark Poster’s (2003) ideas regarding cultural transmission and re-use, or, coming from Memory Studies, Ann Rigney’s (2005) pivotal ideas on the circulation of cultural memory are also not mentioned. These key thinkers are not scrutinized in the book, while I would have been curious (and perhaps expected) to read how the theory of postdigital cultural recycling relates to (or differs from) their work, especially since it is argued that cultural recycling offers a new epistemological approach.
Llamas Ubieto’s chapter is followed by 12 chapters that present case studies shaped by her theoretical framework. Johanna Vollmeyer demonstrates how algorithms shape and intervene in the process of memory-making through and in narratives, whether literary or autobiographical ones. Drawing from contemporary memory studies literature, the chapter argues that recycling can be a means of “doing memory,” wherein media and memory shape each other, making the critical point that algorithmic feedback and datafication lead to shallow engagements with individual and collective pasts. In the following chapter, Linda Maeding argues that the Instagram account @ichbinsophiescholl is “a postdigital product par excellence” (p. 108). The historical, “analogue” figure of Sophie Scholl can be interacted with in digital form, on a platform. Similar to Vollmeyer’s examples, this particular re-presentation is shaped by platform logic: the aesthetics mimic those of other Instagram content and Scholl’s emotional states are presented as “authentic.” This case of recycling presents users a way to engage with history, while it also diverts them from “factual” reality, Maeding contends (p. 112).
María Goicoechea de Jorge’s chapter looks into subversive and performative forms of physical book publishing. Her humorous, yet critical, examples include artist Jesse England’s physical reproduction of an e-book of George Orwell’s 1984 and Mimi Cabell and Jason Huff’s algorithmic processing of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. These examples show how postdigital recycling can make us rethink authorship, originality, and media consumption. María José Calvo González’s chapter zooms in on recycling and reuse of Bezette Stad (Occupied City) by Flemish poet Paul van Ostaijen. It makes the point that circulation of (elements of) the poems keep the text and its cultural memory alive. A similar point is made by Adrián Menéndez de la Cuesta González’s chapter on memes and literature. Focusing on the Twitter account @SparkNotes, the author shows how literature is recycled in memes and, in the work of Tamsyn Muir, how memes are recycled in literature. Antonio Domínguez Leiva’s chapter takes the case of monoliths, reminiscent of the one featured in the book and film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and how they appeared around the globe around 2020. Something of the monolith’s original mysterious meaning resonates, Domínguez Leiva argues, in postdigital culture. Mystery is also the topic of the next chapter, by Rafael Vidal Sanz, on spiritism and haunted houses and how they are recycled in contemporary film through postdigital technologies.
Folk tales are the subject of inquiry of the chapters by Silviano Carrasco Yelmo (on Little Red Riding Hood in board and video games), Teresa Cañada García (on postdigital traditional tales) and Pilar García Carcedo (on memes based on traditional folk tales in the classroom). The last chapter by Begoña Regueiro Salgado returns to canonical literature by Cervantes and Bécquer and the ways in which the recycling of these texts can be an effective educational tool. By the end of the book, readers have been (re)introduced to a wide range of texts and the various cultural practices through which they are recycled; that is, how they are interpreted, infused with new meaning and circulated. The various analyses are predominantly textual and theoretically informed—they are clearly done by authors trained in literary studies. At times, I wondered what different methodological approaches, inspired by the framework of recycling, might have yielded. For example, interviews, focus groups, network analyses, or digital methods (distant reading) might be interesting in this regard. Also, the editors seem absent after their respective chapters. Short introductory chapters to clearly identified sections would have been welcome, as well as an editorial concluding chapter. On a minor note, the book does not include an index or author biographies. Including those would have made it easier to situate the chapters and the authors in existing scholarship, and to look up which key terms the authors identified as essential in their chapters.
On a final note, although it is explicitly about cultural practices and texts, the book’s use of the words recycling and ecology did make me think about the environmental dimensions of all this recycling and the enormous digital media ecology it is part of. There is an inherent paradox here: the recycling of cultural content in the postdigital age is incredibly non-sustainable—in terms of energy and labor (click work), but also because of material e-waste. That is, there is a planetary infrastructure and political economy supporting cultural recycling in the postdigital age that is extracting natural and human resources. This more political dimension is absent from this book, which focused on texts and textual practices, but it might be a critical avenue of research to follow-up on.
