Assemblage Theory and the Network Turn: A Conceptual Framework for Anglophone Literature and Culture

Abstract

In this roundtable the speakers discussed the research undertaken by the members of the current Research Project “Re-orienting Assemblage Theory in Anglophone Literature and Culture (RELY)” (PID2022-137881NB-I00). The speakers aimed to trace the relevance of the notion in critical theory and also in other fields, bearing in mind that the interest in the concept of “assemblage” has been reignited in the last few years, and in connection with the “network turn”. Drawing on several critics, Deleuze and Guattari, among others, the different speakers of the roundtable explained the origin of the concept, its interpretation and re-interpretation as found in critics like Bill Brown. Also, the speakers addressed the potential applicability of assemblage thinking to Anglophone literature and culture, to life writing, and to the idea of feminism-as- assemblage, thus suggesting that the concept can be adapted and transformed as a tool to analyse literary and cultural works that reflect and refract our current multifactorial crises.