ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Circle as turning attention to the materiality and relationality of objects, animate and inanimate, in ways that promote reflection on the meaningful relationships between them. It shows that Caitlin Fisher’s Circle presents objects as existing, always, in relational networks of meaning. The chapter analyzes Circle in order to argue that this work pursues aesthetics of “glitch” and “cute” in subversive ways that display and invite feminist practice and critique. Circle is a work of born-digital electronic literature, which means that it is made on the computer and read through computational devices. It is, like other electronic literature, dependent upon a network of operations occurring across hardware, software, and programming code. Circle exemplifies how Fisher’s oeuvre demonstrates networks of animate and inanimate objects collaborating within a digital context to update literature – to make it arrive for readers who must themselves practice emergent readerly orientations.
