Materiality and Media: Australian Literary Journals in the Post-Digital Publishing Ecology

Abstract

Literary journals have always held a shifting and uncertain place in Australian cultural life, and in recent years, technological developments have both destabilised and provided new possibilities for literary journal publishing. While literary journals have a long history of adapting to challenges, material changes in publication media brought about by the introduction of digital publishing technologies have struck deeper than ever before, and prompted questions about journals' survival and relevance. These questions have, as yet, been the subject of little academic inquiry. This project aims to fill this gap in the knowledge of literary publishing in the 'messy', 'post-digital' publishing ecology, which is characterised by change and negotiations between media and their materialities. The research examines the role materiality plays in the literary journal field within this landscape, and asks how literary journal editors exploit the languages of different media to achieve their goals. In responding to these questions, the research employs methodology that combines interviews with Australian literary journal editors and textual analysis, complemented by a contextual review and underpinned by a theoretical framework based on the sociology of literature. The research argues that a combination of economic, technological, and cultural factors has given rise to a 'hierarchy of media' favouring print in the literary journal field. Within this hierarchy, editors' opinions and activities, funding constraints, and changing markets position print as a site of literary and symbolic value. This hierarchy can, however, be called into question when editors' perspectives are mitigated by those of readers and writers. Here, digital and print textualities and literacies are defined by difference, rather than their capacity to communicate literary or symbolic value. This thesis presents findings on the economics and culture of the Australian literary journal field, and the ways literary journal editors communicate through media and their materialities in the 'post-digital' publishing ecology.