Editorial [PDF]
James Farrugia, Jeffrey Micallef: University of Malta
‘Keats as a nebula’: An Interview with Nicholas Roe [PDF]
The antae Editorial Board: University of Malta
An ‘axe for the frozen sea’: Estrin’s Magic Agential Realism, Insect Thigmotaxis, and the Problem with Kafka [PDF]
Melvin Chen: University of Cardiff
This essay seeks to demonstrate how Marc Estrin’s Insect Dreams: the Half Life of Gregor Samsa constitutes the first piece of magic agential realist literature about insects. The term ‘magic agential realism’ has been coined from an observed coincidence in the literary commitments of Estrin’s novel to the literary genre of magic realism and the posthumanist assumptions it shares with the agential realism of Karen Barad. Given Kafka’s axiom that a literary work ought to function as an ‘axe for the frozen sea within us’. A further claim will be defended is the claim that Estrin’s Insect Dreams is the magic agential axe that shatters the frozen sea of liberal humanist representationalism within Kafka. In providing us with a book that affects us like a disaster and like a suicide (both of which are evoked and exceeded by the ever-more pressing concerns of posthumanism), I will demonstrate how Estrin both fulfils the literary criteria laid out by Kafka to Oskar Pollak and opens up the possibility of re-configuring ethics in order to account for insects through the observed phenomenon of thigmotaxis.
‘Is that my score?’: Between Literature and Digital Games [PDF]
Mario Aquilina: University of Malta
It is on the margins of what Katherine Hayles calls the ‘shifty’ boundaries between computer games and electronic literature as well as between digital art and electronic literature that I set the focus of this article. I argue that electronic literature, with its cohabitation of strong elements of play and claims to ‘literariness’, allows for a discussion of the interface between literary theory and digital games by exposing points of contact as well as divergence through the respective claims of the two discourses.
Portraiture: Finding the Valid Fragment [PDF]
Sergio Muscat: University of Malta
This essay deals with the concepts of fragmentation and reconstruction in the field of portraiture. Taking a portrait as a large fragment of information, we look into ways in which it can be optimised and reduced such that it remains valid but becomes more efficient. The paper commences by exploring the concept of the fragment from various facets, including historically, especially from the modernist point of view, and goes forth to investigate various techniques from practices both adjunct and outside of the field of art in order to inform the portraiture process itself on how information can be collected, optimised, and presented to the viewer.
Encountering Malta II – British Writers and the Mediterranean 1760-1840: Literature, Landscapes, Politics – Conference Review [PDF]
Christine Caruana, James Farrugia: University of Malta
