36
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
run the risk of presuming the existence of an essentialist narrative which
can easily be separated from its form or transmitting medium. 12 As I have
argued elsewhere, however, every adaptation fundamentally changes the
set of relations between ideas, modal configurations, and other human and
non-human participants, thus affecting the ways in which the “original
story” is transmitted and perceived. 13 What emerges from the process of
adaptation, therefore, is not just the same story told differently but a new
story based on an older one. As Darwin notes, “when a species has once
disappeared it never reappears,” 14 since “the process of modification is
necessarily slow, and depends on many complex contingencies.” 15 One
cannot go back in time: once a story is being told, it is out there to interact
with all sorts of events, other media, contexts, stories, etc. Stories, and
therefore adaptations necessarily change since they unfold in time and
space. Even though the analogy is partly inappropriate since we can always
go back to an earlier version of the story while this is not necessarily the
case in biological adaptation, our perception of the actual text is inevitably
influenced by its later adaptations, so a return to the “pure original” is – at
least conceptually – impossible.
An approach to adaptation that takes into account the situatedness of
adaptations in contingent networks of intertexts, objects, humans, and
institutions challenges Bortolotti and Hutcheon’s distinction between
chance-based modifications in biology and “intention-based” modifications
in culture. 16 Cultural adaptations too are highly based on contingency and
unpredictable outcomes resulting from recursive interactions between
different “actors” to employ a concept from Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network
Theory. 17 The category of “intention” is just as deceptive in biological as it is
in cultural adaptation, since neither follows a strictly teleological program.
The fact that there are always human objectives and motives involved
in cultural adaptation does not substantially distinguish the one from
the other. The nature-culture divide has long been deconstructed as a
12 As Johannes Fehrle argues in this collection, adaptations do not necessarily challenge but
produce the existence of a “core” narrative since we always identify the core by looking for it
through the adaptations.
13 Regina Schober, “Adaptation as Connection: Transmediality Reconsidered.” In Adaptation
Studies: New Challenges, New Directions, ed. by Jørgen Bruhn, Anne Gjelsvik, and Eirik Frisvold
Hanssen (London, New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 89–112.
14 Darwin, The Origin of Species, 343.
15 Ibid., 344.
16 Bortolotti and Hutcheon, “On the Origin of Adaptations,” 453.
17 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford
UP, 2007).
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
run the risk of presuming the existence of an essentialist narrative which
can easily be separated from its form or transmitting medium. 12 As I have
argued elsewhere, however, every adaptation fundamentally changes the
set of relations between ideas, modal configurations, and other human and
non-human participants, thus affecting the ways in which the “original
story” is transmitted and perceived. 13 What emerges from the process of
adaptation, therefore, is not just the same story told differently but a new
story based on an older one. As Darwin notes, “when a species has once
disappeared it never reappears,” 14 since “the process of modification is
necessarily slow, and depends on many complex contingencies.” 15 One
cannot go back in time: once a story is being told, it is out there to interact
with all sorts of events, other media, contexts, stories, etc. Stories, and
therefore adaptations necessarily change since they unfold in time and
space. Even though the analogy is partly inappropriate since we can always
go back to an earlier version of the story while this is not necessarily the
case in biological adaptation, our perception of the actual text is inevitably
influenced by its later adaptations, so a return to the “pure original” is – at
least conceptually – impossible.
An approach to adaptation that takes into account the situatedness of
adaptations in contingent networks of intertexts, objects, humans, and
institutions challenges Bortolotti and Hutcheon’s distinction between
chance-based modifications in biology and “intention-based” modifications
in culture. 16 Cultural adaptations too are highly based on contingency and
unpredictable outcomes resulting from recursive interactions between
different “actors” to employ a concept from Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network
Theory. 17 The category of “intention” is just as deceptive in biological as it is
in cultural adaptation, since neither follows a strictly teleological program.
The fact that there are always human objectives and motives involved
in cultural adaptation does not substantially distinguish the one from
the other. The nature-culture divide has long been deconstructed as a
12 As Johannes Fehrle argues in this collection, adaptations do not necessarily challenge but
produce the existence of a “core” narrative since we always identify the core by looking for it
through the adaptations.
13 Regina Schober, “Adaptation as Connection: Transmediality Reconsidered.” In Adaptation
Studies: New Challenges, New Directions, ed. by Jørgen Bruhn, Anne Gjelsvik, and Eirik Frisvold
Hanssen (London, New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 89–112.
14 Darwin, The Origin of Species, 343.
15 Ibid., 344.
16 Bortolotti and Hutcheon, “On the Origin of Adaptations,” 453.
17 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford
UP, 2007).