ABSTRACT
Early in 2014, the Archive of the Now was removed from the Internet. Founded and run by scholar and poet Andrea Brady, the Archive of the Now is a collection of free downloadable audio and video recordings of contemporary poets. It appears to have been collateral damage in an action intended to target Internet research at the university funded by the UK Ministry of Defense, such as a project on cross-cultural attitudes and the shaping of online behaviour in crisis situations. The practice of comparative literature is increasingly shaped by the contested archive of the now that is the Internet. To speak, of the archive of the now is to acknowledge the now of the archive: the pervasiveness of archiving in the people present moment, including in the theory and practice of comparative literature. The sense of global connectivity is reinforced by the archive of the now that is the Internet.
