The Testimony of Structure

Codecs and Contemporary Poetry

Abstract

Many contemporary theorists have observed the increasing directness of the relationship of language to economics through technology. This entwinement of language as and with technology is most evident in the form of code, wherein machinic innovations themselves take the form of language, as software. But the narrow field of software production is clearly not the most profitable means by which finance can be drawn from what is linguistic – rather, social media corporations have found new ways of mining, quantifying and selling the testimony as the performance and recording of subjective experience. This article pursues the moment of the testimony in the context of this technologisation of language, and asks how contemporary literature might withdraw its innovations from the role they play in “industry of the means of production” through intimate sharing.