Inter/archi/para/meta/hyper/transmediality

Abstract

The way Gerard Genette (1982) comprehends transtextuality, broadly as all interactions between texts, mirrors the definition of intermediality, a concept that expands these relations with a focus on media. The term intermedia, in certain way the source for the notion of intermediality, was coined by Dick Higgins (1962) to describe a specific form of Art, constructed from an amalgam of then inseparable languages, and can be dialogued with the form of intermedia later described by Claus Clüver (2007). Intertextuality, perhaps the term that should be in dialogue with intermediality, is just one of the transtextual relations, closer to what Irina Rajewsky (2005) understands as intermedial reference. Meanwhile, Elleström (2010) describes transmediality as one of the types of intermediality, closer to Genette's concept of hypertextuality. Certainly, the theoretical spaces from which these concepts originated—the French structuralism, the arts, media culture—are quite distinct, even though they observe culture in its broad sense. This work seeks ways to dialogue these different perspectives, in order to coherently encompass new forms of interaction, such as those of digital media. In this sense, we analyze the terminology to propose taxonomies that include archimediality, paramediality, metamediality, hypermediality alongside the already defined notions of inter and transmediality.