Literature’s Elsewheres

An examination of a series of diverse, radical, and experimental international works from the 1950s to the present. What is a literary work? In Literature’s Elsewheres, Annette Gilbert tackles this question by deploying an extended concept of literature, examining a series of diverse, radical, experimental works from the 1950s to the present that occupy the liminal zone between art and literature. These works—by American Artist, Allison Parrish, Natalie Czech, Stephanie Syjuco, Fiona Banner, Elfriede Jelinek, Dan Graham, Robert Barry, George Brecht, and others—represent a pluralized literary practice that imagines a different literature emerging from its elsewheres. Investigating a work’s coming into being—its transition from “text” to “work” as a social object and pragmatic category of literary communication—Gilbert probes the assumptions and foundations that underpin literature,