8
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
since the 1990s. This transformation amounts to nothing less than a shift
from a largely analog, localized, image- and text-based “Gutenberg Galaxy” 4
to a more rapidly disseminating mixed analog-digital environment. It is a
moment that forces us, once again, to re-examine notions of authorship,
control, audiences, sources and adaptations, as well as interactions between
medium and consumer, or between consumers and producers. 5 This volume
sets out to explore how these shifts relate to adaptation studies and what they
mean for the field. It does so by examining new forms of adaptations and their
cultural embeddedness both theoretically and analytically, with the help of
a range of texts constituting some of the major new forms of adaptations and
adaptation environments that have arisen in the wake of the rise of digital
media. In doing so, the contributions examine not only new texts and new
media themselves, but the political, technological, social, legal, and economic
structures that have shaped them and their being in the cultural world.
The contributions in this collection make clear that this scholarly perspective needs to do more than take into account the shifts in the media
studied: it must also examine the ways in which the complex relations always
involved in adaptation processes (e.g. the unstable relation between “author,”
producer, adapter, rights holders, text(s), and audiences, to name just a few)
have become further complicated in convergence culture. As part of this
complication, new questions that were often relegated to the margins in the
analysis of more traditional adaptations have come to the fore. This is why
convergence culture, an environment in which “old and new media collide,” 6
is of particular interest to adaptation scholars: it highlights in new ways
the complex interrelations around texts as well as their critical reception
and interpretation that have been raised in adaptation studies since its
formation into a more cohesive, more independent field in the last decade.
A convergence environment, for instance, further destabilizes received
notions of anteriority, authorship, and reception by opening the object of
inquiry to texts that differ from older ones that were less physically mutable. 7
4 Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1968).
5 Axel Bruns has coined the terms “produser” and “produsage” to highlight the blurring of the
boundaries between passive consumption and active participation in a digital environment in
which non-commercial actors can relatively easily create and share content online. Axel Bruns,
Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage (New York: Lang, 2008).
6 Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York
University Press, 2006).
7 Observations about the instability of “source” text and “adaptation” have become a critical
commonplace in adaptation studies over the past decade with authors drawing on intertextuality studies, Derridean deconstruction, or Bakhtinian heteroglossia to complicate notions of
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
since the 1990s. This transformation amounts to nothing less than a shift
from a largely analog, localized, image- and text-based “Gutenberg Galaxy” 4
to a more rapidly disseminating mixed analog-digital environment. It is a
moment that forces us, once again, to re-examine notions of authorship,
control, audiences, sources and adaptations, as well as interactions between
medium and consumer, or between consumers and producers. 5 This volume
sets out to explore how these shifts relate to adaptation studies and what they
mean for the field. It does so by examining new forms of adaptations and their
cultural embeddedness both theoretically and analytically, with the help of
a range of texts constituting some of the major new forms of adaptations and
adaptation environments that have arisen in the wake of the rise of digital
media. In doing so, the contributions examine not only new texts and new
media themselves, but the political, technological, social, legal, and economic
structures that have shaped them and their being in the cultural world.
The contributions in this collection make clear that this scholarly perspective needs to do more than take into account the shifts in the media
studied: it must also examine the ways in which the complex relations always
involved in adaptation processes (e.g. the unstable relation between “author,”
producer, adapter, rights holders, text(s), and audiences, to name just a few)
have become further complicated in convergence culture. As part of this
complication, new questions that were often relegated to the margins in the
analysis of more traditional adaptations have come to the fore. This is why
convergence culture, an environment in which “old and new media collide,” 6
is of particular interest to adaptation scholars: it highlights in new ways
the complex interrelations around texts as well as their critical reception
and interpretation that have been raised in adaptation studies since its
formation into a more cohesive, more independent field in the last decade.
A convergence environment, for instance, further destabilizes received
notions of anteriority, authorship, and reception by opening the object of
inquiry to texts that differ from older ones that were less physically mutable. 7
4 Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1968).
5 Axel Bruns has coined the terms “produser” and “produsage” to highlight the blurring of the
boundaries between passive consumption and active participation in a digital environment in
which non-commercial actors can relatively easily create and share content online. Axel Bruns,
Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage (New York: Lang, 2008).
6 Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York
University Press, 2006).
7 Observations about the instability of “source” text and “adaptation” have become a critical
commonplace in adaptation studies over the past decade with authors drawing on intertextuality studies, Derridean deconstruction, or Bakhtinian heteroglossia to complicate notions of