Literature in the Time of Code

Literary works can help us think critically about the possibilities and problems posed by new technologies. But what contemplative or creative spaces can literature establish now that reading and writing increasingly occur alongside forms of computation ranging from social media algorithms to artificial intelligence? In this course, which is anchored in Argentina but also incorporates texts from elsewhere in Latin America, we will examine some complexities that arise when literature confronts code. Resisting accounts of technological determinism and instead contemplating how literary texts can help us assess the changes that code enacts, we will consider materials including speculative short stories, a cy-fi novel, poetry generators, and manifestos, and we will even evaluate the limits of computational approaches to literary analysis.