This article, a prologue to the special issue ‘Memory Worlds: Reframing Time and the Past’, is a follow-up to the plenary session ‘Connecting Memory Traditions around the World’, organised by the authors in the Third Annual Conference of the Memory Studies Association held in Madrid (2019). Elaborating on the work of critical physicists such as Rovelli and Barad, it calls into question hegemonic conceptions of linear time and the past in two ways. First, by bringing in crucial concepts elaborated in the field of memory studies that anticipate, support or may accommodate this claim. Secondly, by summoning social anthropology to the debate, as a field where subaltern epistemologies of time and the past have become a crucial area of research in the last decades. The article calls for the broadening of the Memory Studies agenda in order to move beyond implicit well-established conceptions of linear time that may obscure or obliterate alternate epistemologies, usually dwelling in the margins., The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Regarding Marije Hristova and Francisco Ferrándiz, this text is part of project CSO2015-66104-R (MINECO/FEDER). Marije Hristova has also received funding from the EU Horizon 2020 MSCA COFUND scheme (grant agreement number 713548). Johanna Vollmeyer received funding from the Spanish national research project REC-LIT: Reciclajes Culturales: Transliteraturas en la era postdigital (Ref: RTI2018-094-B-I00), Peer reviewed

ABSTRACT: The novel "Vor der Zunahme der Zeichen" (2016) by Senthuran Varatharajah is a conversation on Facebook of two characters, both of whom are heirs of the diaspora (from Sri Lanka and from Kosovo) in Germany. It experiments with various forms to break free from multiple limits and imposed cultural assignments and also presents diverse manifestations of the relationship between the current diasporic condition and the postdigital. Therefore, it serves as an intriguing exponent for the exploration of this relationship. First, the representation of the diasporic condition is reassessed once it has been modified by the impact of these new, postdigital practices. And second, the role of digital media and of postdigital practices is especially relevant to the aesthetic representation of the diaspora, reaching beyond a traditional notion of the diasporic condition. For this reason, the function of select postdigital characteristics will be explored as component elements of a new diasporic poetics.

Este artículo examina los límites territoriales, lingüísticos y materiales en el campo de la creación electrónica en español y traza las tensiones postidentitarias que subyacen a las prácticas artísticas y culturales en una lógica postdigital. Por un lado, desde el español deslocalizado se intenta dar cabida no solo a una revolución del paradigma de lo nacional y sus relatos, sino a un acercamiento que pone el foco en el aumento sin precedentes de la circulación de materiales, individuos, textos e imaginarios hacia lo global, del que se pone como ejemplo la obra del colectivo SantoFile y sus reciclajes. Por otro lado, desde el español localizado se abordan propuestas más territoriales que incluso pueden llegar a desdibujar lenguajes volviendo la mirada al territorio, como en el caso la obra de Salvador Barajas. Por último, desde España, una joven generación de creadores, entre los que encontramos a Mario Santamaría, trabajan sobre los cambios culturales del ecosistema digital y de sus materiales. Estos artistas utilizan los flujos y materiales de la web para crear un diálogo cultural generando espacios que escapan de la nación y del territorio y se insertan en discursos globales. Estas tres pulsiones nos ayudarán a trazar las cuestiones de la creación electrónica en España relacionadas con una posible enunciación identitaria y a imaginar posibles futuros postdigitales.

RESUMEN: Asumiendo que nos hallamos ya en una condición postdigital, esta conlleva una transformación a nivel comunicativo y organizativo del saber por la digitalización, la circulación y datificación masivas. Debido a estos cambios, el reciclaje cultural se ha convertido en una tendencia hegemónica. Además, las prácticas de reciclaje afectadas por las características de la condición postdigital son especialmente idóneas para modificar, subvertir y remodelar tanto contenidos como tratamientos y formas precedentes. En este sentido, este artículo muestra mediante ejemplos la evolución del trabajo de las mujeres en el ámbito del arte y la literatura electrónica, centrándose para ello en cómo funcionan las prácticas y fenómenos del reciclaje cultural postdigital cuando son desarrollados desde una perspectiva feminista.

This brief essay shares a classroom experience carried off with Hypothes.is with the aim of reflecting about the role of computer applications in educational setting as tools to teach collaborative reading practices.

Las versiones de los cuentos tradicionales pueden entenderse como sucesivas traducciones de los arquetipos que subyacen a ellos. En el caso de los cuentos firmados por El Hematocrítico, esta traducción se da en un doble plano –el del texto y el de la ilustración–, y surge del diálogo entre ambos aspectos. En este estudio veremos la relación que se establece entre los dos, tanto desde el punto de vista narrativo como del descriptivo. Por otra parte, a lo largo de los seis años que separan el primero, y el quinto y último de esta serie de cuentos, este diálogo avanza desde una visión atemporal del mundo hasta una visión postdigital (o híperdigital). Junto con ello, encontramos contraseñas culturales destinadas en buena medida a mediadores en la lectura infantil, que muestran la transformación del imaginario colectivo tras años de interacción de los medios audiovisuales con la lectura.

ABSTRACT: This study explores how postdigital technology impacts on the global, and how it results in the modification not only of the configuration and representation of the global, but also of cultural and linguistic practices, which can now be considered postglobal in nature. In the novel ‘Vor der Zunahme der Zeichen’ (2016), by Senthuran Varatharajah, digital media and its relationship with language are inseparable from the issue of globalization. Here, the term “globalization” has a dual meaning, owing to the inherent ambivalence between the materiality and immateriality of the Postdigital. Firstly, the Internet has become an intermediary of cultural connections, while simultaneously reincorporating, remediating and feeding off the physical and cultural space. As such, it plays its role in the figuration of interconnections, which are in turn linked to global coordinates. Secondly, the immateriality of the space itself and the evanescence of its spatial distances and pathways point towards a reconceptualization, or the suspension of global coordinates in a geopolitical sense. Put another way, they point towards the Postglobal.

Transnational diaspora groups make intensive use of community media when communicating and connecting in cyberspace. In particular, I argue that blogs constitute a new kind of (post)migrant archive that compiles shared histories and experiences of diaspora. The principal role of the digital archive has become defined, not so much by storage, as by circulation and transfer, in what media theorist Wolfgang Ernst (2002) calls the paradigm shift in the reconceptualization of the archive in the digital age.Indeed, circulation and transfer are also essential dimensions of the digital diaspora. Regarding the modes of interactions of diaspora communities on the web, I will analyse how (post)migrants’ online self-representation and their struggle to gain visibility shape new understandings of the digital archive of diaspora. My focus targets blogs as one of the most popular genres in cyberspace. The samples I analyse are written by (post)migrants and are often intended to decenter the German “Mehrheitsgesellschaft” [“mainstream society”] and diversify its artistic-intellectual scene.It has been shown that these new media settings also give rise to new forms of writing; for example, authorship is often collaborative. My thesis is that this very heterogeneous virtual collaboration often has the effect of transcending the contours of stable “Turkish”, “Arab” and/or “German” identities and of thus also contradicting dominant parameters of identity politics.This is the case with the collective blog “migrantenstadl” that is the subject of my analysis; “migriert, migriert, sonst sind wir verloren” [“migrate, migrate, otherwise we are lost”] is the motto of this often provocative project and an invitation to its readers. “Migration” is movement and mobility, whereas “Archive” is preservation, so how to construct an archive of migration on moving ground?While my primary interest is to explore and connect the concepts of digital diaspora and digital archive, I will try to give concrete form to my theoretical findings on this nexus by analysing the above-mentioned blog, which is a cultural and political initiative directed by Tunay Önder and Imad Mustafa that was founded in 2011.