"Shakespeare’s Digital Flow: Humans, Technologies and the Possibilities of Intercultural Exchange"

Shakespeare is no longer fully human. He or "it," as an assemblage of texts, is now part of the information flow that characterizes the digital age. To some readers, this will sound like a deliberate provocation, not least because Shakespeare has traditionally served as a touchstone of humanity. The word "human" is mentioned 33 times in the works themselves; its antonym, "inhuman," 8 times, nearly always as a pejorative, denoting savagery, uncivility, or aberrant behavior. (3) Although "nonhuman" is not mentioned, as a consequence of digital technologies it is increasingly part of the Shakespeare one experiences. Shakespeare studies has responded to this, extending its media studies turn to encompass algorithms and search engines--these too, recent work has emphasized, are among the users of Shakespeare. (4) Indeed, such non-human users may even be placed on a par with human users, and regarded as agential because they do not merely transmit Shakespeare but transfigure it, shaping where and how readers, viewers, or users encounter and interact with the texts. These new realities require anyone invested in Shakespeare to ask anew, what is the human dimension of Shakespeare in and for the twenty-first century