Ruffel, Lionel

Publishing as dialogue. On creative writing programmes - 2018.


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To envision writing as a dialogue is to implicitly recognize a disruption with respect to a previous conception of writing as a soliloquy. Even so, the entire challenge of transforming contemporary literary practices is settled less within the concept of “Literature” than it is within the concept of publication. Creative writing programs are both a symptom and a cause of these transformations, which nevertheless go beyond them. In his article, Lionel Ruffel distinguishes between a concept of the soliloquy, which belongs to the literary culture embodied in “Literature,” and a concept of the dialogue which belongs to the literary culture unfolding in the era of publication. This transformation comes with a foregrounding of writing and not of literature.