The book and the e-book as devices: technological discourses within the text apparatus

Abstract

Within the investigations about the differences and complementarities between
books and e-books, this paper discusses the implementation, in the context of
textual supports, of the concept of apparatus as proposed by Matthew Fuller, who proposes an expansion of the category of discourses by Michel Foucault within a symbolic context that includes technologies such as electronics, in a model that also mobilizes propositions of Vilém Flusser and Friedrich Kittler. The implications of the printed text/digital flow are discussed, not in the morphological aspect, but focusing on the system involved in the encoding of the device itself as technological/cultural artifact, which opens a new symbolic dimension, with its own analytical implications.