Research Paper presented at the International Conference on Memory in a Digital Age organized by the Department of Memory Studies, IIT Madras

1. Memory and Textuality
Transactive Memory of the Demotic Author
Abstract:
With the advent and proliferation of Electronic media in the 20th century and subsequently
the Internet and Web platforms in the 21st, not only do we find new mediums for literary
expression but also new ways of reading, interacting, and analyzing literary texts. Authorship
has moved from being an individual phenomenon to a mass phenomenon, as noted by R. Lyle
Skains, who argues that in the twentieth century “authorial voices are select and selected...
the few communicating to the many...” and the readers are simply “recipients of knowledge
and art, rather than being generators of such.” (Skains)
Skains argues that in the twenty first century, the digital media ‘has broken down barriers
between the mass communicator and the audience, sponsoring a many to many
communication paradigm, through the interactive capabilities of Web 2.0.’ (Skains) In other
words, mediums of literary expression in the digital era are also mediums of communication
between the author and reader. Reading a literary text is no longer a passive activity of
flipping pages and linear ways of imagination, but is rather an interactive activity among
readers and authors to come together to build a narrative which can make use of the creative
affordances of the digital medium. And thus, the demotic author, as described by Skains in
her Digital Authorship: Publishing in the Attention Economy, is both the ‘re-emergence of
oral storytellers of old, walking amongst their audiences and responding to them, and a figure
of the future, when publishing spheres may not be controlled by the few, but shared spaces
for the many.’ (Skains)
Considering this, one is quickly reminded of the theory of the transactive memory, as defined
by Daniel Wegner to be ‘a set of individual memory systems in combination with the
communication that takes place between individuals.’ (Wegner) Although questioned and
debated, this theory can open up new interpretations about the demotic authorship
phenomenon and the role of the transactive memory in the creation of a digital literary text;
and the present paper aims to study this hypothesis.
Key Words: Transactive Memory, Demotic Authorship, Digital literature

2. Introduction:
It has been a decade since the American writer Nicholas Carr first asked the question “Is
Google Making Us Stupid?” (Carr) And the effects of the proliferation of digital and
electronic tools on human memory and literary expression became topics for debate and
discussion. And although it has been proved otherwise time and again, the digital tools are
quite often seen as threats to retention capabilities of the human brain as well as its ability to
create literature.
Adam Hammond observes in his chapter titled ‘Medium Shifts: Literary Thought in Media
History’ how medium shifts are initially met with pessimism; and while analyzing the usage
of the digital medium for literary expression one would agree with Hammond when he
observes that no matter the age, ‘transitions in literary technology tend to produce similar
anxieties’ (Hammond, Medium Shifts: Literary Thought in Media History) To support his
arguments, Hammond provides a historical overview of the critical questions which changes
in the mediums of expression, ranging from writing to modern day technology, have met
with. Carr’s arguments in the article mentioned earlier seem to be a reflection of such
anxieties pertaining to the digital medium as he points out its potentially adverse effect on the
human retention capacity and literary reading and writing.
According to Hammond, “Media historians speak of four ages of literature: the oral age,
when literature was performed from memory for live audiences; the chirographic or
manuscript age, when, after the development of the alphabet, literature attained its first
written form; the print age, in which writing became subject to mechanical reproduction; and
the digital age we are presently entering.” (Hammond, Medium Shifts: Literary Thought in
Media History) And just like every other medium shift, the digital age has ushered in
redefinitions of the roles and identity of the author, the reader and above all of what is
literature.
Since discussions about literary creation often involve a discussion on memory, and because
both mutually affect each other, it is important to observe whether there is any change in the
role of human memory pertaining to literary expression in the medium shift brought about by
the digital era; and if there is, what is it?
Literary Practice of the Digital Age:
With regard to the question mentioned above, one can say there are two essential aspects of
literature that have been significantly affected by the medium shift, namely, reading and
writing. As literature moved from pen and paper to computer screens, and eventually to the
web and AI bots, it gave rise to practices revisiting the previous understanding of its nature,
significance and scope. In the digital age, terms such as ‘interactivity’, ‘generativity’, etc
started being associated with literature. This, gave rise to a new field of study, i.e. Electronic
literature defined by Katherine Hayles as literature that excludes digitized print literature and
is ‘digitally born’; “a first generation digital object created on a computer and (usually) meant
to be read on a computer.” (Hayles) Thus, in the digital age, literature has seized to be the
absolute outcome of human genius and creativity and became the end result of the interaction
between the electronic/digital medium and the human creator.

3. Considering these changes, and the eventual transformation of the Electronic into the Digital,
the ideas about authorship and readership were bound to change; and as Adam Hammond
argues, “No group is more sensitive to the changes inherent in the shift to digital forms than
readers of literature.” (Hammond, The Digital Medium and Its Message) In Hammond’s
opinion ‘what the digital age has accomplished, above all else, is to defamiliarize the act of
reading’. Hammond’s argument can be justified by the amount of interactivity one finds in
the digital platforms for reading literary texts; as well as the amount of choices we find for
reading it. So, instead of the passive flipping of pages while reading a printed text, today’s
reader interacts with the text by clicking on a link to move to the next page or using audio-
visual cues for reading the text; and often actively participates in creating the text by filling in
the spaces left incomplete by the author; as in the case of hypertext fictions.
And within this scenario, the demotic author, described by R. Lyle Skains as “one who is ‘of
the people’, participating in a community of writers and readers, often in genres considered
‘popular’, common, or even denounced as derivative and of lesser worth.” (Skains) The
demotic author is the one who turns writing into a collaborative process; which, in itself can
be considered a notable shift from the earlier conception of writing as a skill possessed by
few. As a consequence, the text, once it is published on the web platform, is open for
innumerable inputs and interpretations from its readers. Often the text’s completion is
dependent on the readers’ interaction with it on the digital medium. Secondly, much depends
on the readers’ suggestions and opinions regarding how the narrative should progress, which
parts of the narrative should be developed more, etc as well as the amount of ‘attention’ it
receives from readers. Thus, every new reading of a digital literary text, adds a new
interpretation of its narrative.
Transactive Memory System and the Digital Mediums of Literary
Expression:
While discussing the pessimistic reactions regarding the mark of the digital on human
retention and creativity, Adam Hammond cites the observations made by Betsy Sparrow,
Jenny Liu and Daniel Wegner in “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of
Having Information at our fingertips” (Sparrow, Liu and Wegner); the main finding of this
study, as mentioned by Hammond, being that ‘the internet is indeed becoming an
increasingly important form of external or ‘transactive memory’—and that our access to vast
stores of information online has materially affected the way we remember.’ (Hammond,
Medium Shifts: Literary Thought in Media History)
Similar argument can be found in Nicholas Carr’s article wherein he observes that because of
the digital platforms and their creative ways of dealing with literary texts, ‘I’m not thinking
the way I used to think’ and that ‘the deep reading that used to come naturally has become a
struggle as the mind keeps on looking for something else to do every now and then.’ (Carr)
As we read his article further, we can agree with Hammond’s observation that according to
Carr ‘literary reading is the most threatened type of reading in the digital age’ (Hammond,
The Digital Medium and its Message)
It can be argued that our memory of a text survives through the ways which we employ to
read it; especially in the case of the digital text. And in the digital age, the participatory

4. technique of reading has significantly affected the way in which literary texts are read and
remembered by readers. For instance, a reader could rely on the web to search for Electronic
and Digital literature platforms such as poetry and prose generators, social media platforms,
twine fiction generators, etc. where they can participate in creating a text; turning them into
collaborators rather than being passive receivers of thoughts and expressions. For instance,
any individual writing stories through the medium of the blog, would find the reviews
presented in the comment section below their write up quite helpful in understanding how
their work is being received by the reading community. Thus, the creation and reception of
the digital text relies on the transactive memory of ways in which a reader interacts with the
internet and the digital medium. It would not be a surprise then to find digital texts which are
popularly circulated solely because of their ability to engage readers in a variety of
participative ways. Similarly, it is obvious for the writers and readers of the traditional print
medium to feel threatened at a time when digital writing and publishing mediums offer a
wide range of creative opportunities to writers for creating interactive literary texts for their
readers.
Transactive Memory and the Case of the Demotic Author:
The idea of Demotic authorship as developed by R. Lyle Skains, considers authorship to be a
communicative process. A process through which, an individual communicates/expresses
their ideas and perceptions while frequently hinting at some common quintessential human
experience/condition. The very mention of ‘the storytellers of old’, in the definition of the
demotic author mentioned earlier, supports this observation; as it was the practice of the
storytellers of the oral tradition to tell stories which were new as well as old [known yet
unknown]. Thus, it is needless to say they employed their transactive memory stores in order
to create literature. The only distinction then, between the old storytellers and the demotic
authors being that earlier humans were treated as transactive memory stores whereas today
the chat boxes, search engines and comment sections found on digital writing applications
facilitate such function.
However, the demotic author isn’t simply the old storyteller, and as Skains points out they are
also a ‘figure of the future’; someone who employs the digital medium’s affordances for
creating and publishing a text when, in Skains’ words, ‘publishing spheres may not be
controlled by the few, but shared spaces for the many.’ Thus, the demotic author is someone
who on one hand challenges the traditional conceptions of the autonomy of the author and on
the other the authority of the publisher; functioning as an individual capable of managing the
creative and publishing processes by themselves. And hence, authorship ceases to exist as a
privileged profession carried out by a few and reaches the masses through its characteristic of
easy accessibility.
The question then, is whether our tendency to remember the ways in which to access
information instead of remembering the information itself affecting the way we write and
read literature? How much is the practice of treating the web as our transactive memory store
affecting the way we understand literature today?

5. Well, one can say that because of the internet functioning as a transactive memory store
creating literature has become a democratic phenomenon; where every individual, with a will
to express their thoughts, can become a creative writer using the affordances of the web and
the digital medium. It is safe to argue then, that the very concept of Demotic authorship came
into being because of the practice of treating the internet as a transactive memory store.
Meanwhile, for the reader, considering the web as a transactive memory store has helped in
easily accessing literary texts and also actively participating in their creation.
Against the anxieties which Wegner, Sparrow and Carr shared in the last decade, regarding
the adverse effect of the digital medium on human memory and creative ability, the digital
medium at present can be said to have made it possible for humans to re-evaluate the memory
of the texts they read as well as explore new possibilities and techniques of creating one. And
as demotic authors gain popularity and their works become a part of popular literature, it is
important to consider the analytical lens of transactive memory and its role in the creation of
their texts. Hence, for the demotic author, asking how many readers visited the webpage
where the work was published is the same as the author of the print medium asking how
many copies of the book were sold.
Conclusion:
It is indeed true that the affordances of the digital literary mediums have made creative
writing a collaborative and interactive process; a practice which can be pursued and
performed by anyone with an electronic device and internet access. Whether this change is a
welcome thought or not will perhaps remain a matter of debate as doubts are still raised
against the quality of such content as well as its literary depth and value. But, what is
significant about the digital writing platforms today is that against such challenges regarding
their literary value, they have retained the influence of classic literary texts and writing
practices while also providing the new writers to practice their own art freely. So, for
instance, an interactive platform like a poetry generator would allow the creators to create
their poems while following the style of classical poets. To quote Adam Hammond:
“The digital medium is harming our ability to concentrate on literature; yet the few moments
of concentrated literary attention that we somehow manage to achieve can provide valuable
means of understanding and even resisting the digital world. The digital medium is both
strengthening democracy, by granting greater opportunities for access and participation, and
weakening it, by making difficult to formulate individual opinions in solitude.” (Hammond,
The Digital Medium and its Message)
Secondly, the transactive memory system which was earlier exclusively used to study the
communicative environments among humans can function as an important tool to study the
literary outputs in the digital age as well; whether it can be applicable to all digital literary
genres and forms can be a matter for further research. And yet, it is evident that as long as the
digital and web platform prevails as a medium of literary expression, the transactive memory
system if employed for critical evaluation of a literary text, can open up newer interpretations
regarding its textuality, authorship, publication and readership.

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