Body Modification: Recombinant Materiality and Ethics in the Remediated Print Wor(l)d

Abstract

This thesis examines two case studies of experimental print texts in order to trace how their materiality shapes their meanings. My case studies are Tom Phillips’s A Humument (5th ed., 2012) and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes (2010), both of which are altered texts that have materially manipulated an existing print text in their creative processes. Guided by the materially-focused and interdisciplinary theories of Bruno Latour, I strive to model a reading of these case studies that pays heed to the specificity of their materiality, as well as connecting them to related networks of other texts and material histories that are revealed by their interactions with the texts they alter. Through these case studies, this thesis therefore examines the communicative role of materiality more broadly, while questioning the attendant consequences, and even the ethics, of altering or appropriating this materiality.