Infrastructuralism and Editorial Practice.
The Life of Literature after the Death of
the Editor
This article discusses the editorial practices of literary journals
and other publishing platforms, and the new shapes they take
in the altered media ecologies of contemporary literature
in Scandinavia. Inspired by American media theorist John
Durham Peter’s call for a new academic paradigm, “infrastructuralism”, focused on the mundane, underlying structures
that make our societies work without calling attention to themselves, it examines how the dissolving of collective information
infrastructures and traditional literary institutions affect editorial
work, and how new editorial practices can draw attention to
and affect functional literary infrastructures and even establish
new ones. From a conceptual discussion of the implications
of the “editorial” and its relation to “the curatiorial”, a recent
buzzword, and a recuperation of a well-known critique of
the editor as a historical patriarchal figure, it establishes an
infrastructural angle upon recent changes in the Danish literary
scene, specifically the crisis of the (printed) literary journal, and
the recent rise in micropublishing ventures defining themselves
in direct opposition to the professional publishing industry. In
a questioning of the social imbalance implied in the familiar
avant-garde argument that seeks out the future of progressive
literary practices in explicitly underground or “experimental”
practices, especially in times when the large, collective
infrastructures designed to disseminate diverse cultural products
to a broader audience are disintegrating, it finally discusses the
contemporary Instagram phenomenon Rupi Kaur, who merges
poetry, minority identity and pop culture in a poetic practice
that speaks to millions of followers worldwide, as a different
example of the future of literature after the reign of the editor
has ended. In conclusion, it suggests that a critical merging
of the experiences from micropublishing with those of social
media macropublishing is needed in order to understand and
restore the value of conscientious editorial work to the future
infrastructures of literature.