Email and epistolary culture: text, technology, history

Seen through the lens of contemporary cultural theory, the relation between text and technology is still too often conceived in dichotomous terms. Either technological materialities effect decisive, irreversible changes in the content of communication or the socio-cultural articulation under investigation transcends the particularities of the technological infrastructure and regimes of circulation. This tendency towards technological or textual determinism has been particularly acute in new media research which focuses either on the geo-political form of informational networks or the located practices of the ethnographer's text: form/content; global/local; theoretical/empirical; production/consumption. Rather than view these foci as strict binaries, however, my research maps their symbiotic and dynamic relation. As a case study, I investigate the textual practices, technological modalities and social formations of epistolary and email culture. The project traces narratives of disembodiment, presence and affect through three historical sites: a 'virtual community' of nineteenth century British letter writers; the postcard correspondence of a group of Australian writers during the First World War; and the performances of a twenty first century email discussion group. This complex archive of cultural production demonstrates the nuanced dialectic between technology and text