Reinstradare il postmoderno: da Kittler a Tom McCarthy

The essay discusses Kittler's notion of literature as mediality in modernism, pop art and postmodernism. It argues that postmodernism is indebted to a modernist project of literature as a visual medium which was taken up by pop art, especially in the works of Rauschenberg, W. Burroughs and J. G. Ballard. This archeology of literature as mediality resurfaces in Tom McCarthy's recent novel 'Remainder', which is analysed as a re-enactment of the visual project promoted by modernity.