As an alternative to print media, digital media make us newly aware of the materiality of experimental poetic texts and require us to account for their media-specific differences. Although already several theoretical models have been put forward to define these differences, so far few poems have been analyzed in terms of their media-specific textual materiality. This thesis seeks to fill this gap in the applied media-specific analysis of experimental poetry. It combines traditional close reading with a media-specific approach in order to investigate the relationship between the physical characteristics and signifying strategies of four experimental poetic texts in various digital and non-digital media. It critically interrogates the specific use of the given medium in each poem, and illustrates that their respective textual materiality cannot be specified in advance based on general assumptions concerning the medium in question. A digital poem is not inherently more innovative than a non-digital poem. Rather, a poem is perceived as innovative if it resists conventional reading strategies by establishing a particularly complex, dynamic, and effectively anomalous sense of textual materiality, which necessarily only emerges from the direct interplay among text, object, and reader.

Ce mémoire s’emploie à cerner les contours de la pensée incréative telle que la précise Kenneth Goldsmith dans les essais Uncreative Writing (2011) et Wasting time on the Internet (2016). S’appuyant sur un corpus de textes qui vise à analyser les conséquences de ce nouveau rapport au monde instauré par l’avènement du numérique, notre réflexion s’applique à révéler comment cette redéfinition de nos pratiques s’accompagne d’une transformation de notre rapport au texte, au langage et à la création. Le numérique ne doit plus se définir en termes d’outils ou d’avancées technologiques. Il est un espace qui nous entoure et dans lequel nous évoluons. Cet espace a favorisé la mise en place d’un nouveau rapport envers le savoir et ses moyens de production, de diffusion et de réception. À la base de cet écosystème numérique réside du langage : du code binaire. Des images, aux sons et aux vidéos qui sillonnent le Web, tout procède du langage. Internet propose de se confronter à l’abondance textuelle qui structure l’espace numérique en inondant la page de mots et de leur matérialité. Cette série de textes qui se divisent en section dont les titres reprennent les noms de mèmes célèbres est le résultat d’un travail de création employant des méthodes littéraires issues d’une pensée incréative telle que développée par Kenneth Golsmith. Ainsi, basées sur le concept de postproduction (Bourriaud), ces compositions font appel à des stratégies de copie et d’appropriation et usent des mots comme des matériaux de construction. Le lecteur est invité à les lire/non-lire en redonnant leur sens à des blocs de langage décontextualisés. / This dissertation seeks to identify the contours of uncreative thinking as articulated by Kenneth Goldsmith in the essays Uncreative Writing (2011) and Wasting time on the Internet (2016). Based on a corpus of texts that aims to analyze the consequences of this new relationship to the digital world, our reflection applies to reveal how this redefinition of our practices is accompanied by a transformation of our relationship to text, language and creation. Digital should no longer viewed only as tools or technological advances. It is a space that surrounds us and in which we evolve. This space has favored the establishment of a new relationship with knowledge and its means of production, dissemination and reception. At the base of this digital ecosystem lies language: binary code. From images, to sounds and videos that crisscross the Web, everything proceeds from language. Internet proposes to confront the textual abundance that structures the digital space by flooding the page with words and their materiality. This series of texts, which are divided into sections whose titles take up the names of famous memes, is the result of a creative work employing literary methods stemming from uncreative thinking as put forward by Kenneth Golsmith. Thus, based on the concept of postproduction (Bourriaud), these compositions call upon strategies of copying and appropriation and use words as building materials. The reader is invited to read/decode them by giving back meaning to decontextualized blocks of language.

Recent scholarship on conceptual writing has turned to the role of affect in poetry. Critics such as Calvin Bedient claim that by using appropriated text and appealing to intellectual encounters with poetry based around a central “concept,” conceptual writing diminishes or even ignores affect. Bedient in particular is concerned with affect's relationship with political efficacy, a relationship I call “æffect.” I make the case that because of its use of appropriated material, we must examine the transformation from source text to poetic work when discussing affect in conceptual writing. Kenneth Goldsmith's Seven American Deaths and Disasters, which consists of transcriptions of audio recordings made during and immediately following major American tragedies, involves a specific kind of affective transformation: the cliché. I discuss what makes a cliché, especially in relation to affect, before turning to Sianne Ngai's Ugly Feelings and her concept of “stuplimity.” Stuplimity is an often ignored and not easily articulated affect that arises from boredom and repetition. Stuplimity is critical for Seven American Deaths and Disasters, especially for the “open feeling” that it produces in its wake. This uncanny feeling indicates a changing tide in conversations about conceptual writing. Rather than focus on the affect of æffect, we should instead turn to the effect. / text