Brouhaha: Worlds of the Contemporary

Within the hypermediated age where knowledge production is decentered and horizontal, the experience of lived time has become a concordance of temporalities. The literary imagination, which was emblematic of modernity and thoroughly connected to the book as a support structure, has now become integrated within a much vaster regime of publication. Thought concerning the world is from now on a thought concerning a plurality of worlds. 

By way of six guiding threads (exposition, media, controversy, publication, institutionalization, archaeology), this essay describes the transformation of cultural forms and visions of history. 

Lionel Ruffel is professor of comparative literature and creative writing at the University of Paris VIII. He is author of Le dénouement and Volodine post-exotique.

Raymond N. MacKenzie is professor of English at the University of St. Thomas.