“Any Means Necessary to Refuse Erasure by Algorithm:” Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s Travesty Generator

Authors

Zach Whalen, University of Mary WashingtonFollow

Document Type

Article

Journal Title

Digital Humanities Quarterly

Publication Date

2023

Abstract

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram's 2019 book of poetry is titled Travesty Generator in reference to Hugh Kenner and Joseph O'Rourke's Pascal program to “fabricate pseudo-text” by producing text such that each n-length string of characters in the output occurs at the same frequency as in the source text. Whereas for Kenner and O'Rourke, labeling their work a “travesty” is a hyperbolic tease or a literary burlesque, for Bertram, the travesty is the political reality of racism in America. For each of the works Travesty Generator, Bertram uses the generators of computer poetry to critique, resist, and replace narratives of oppression and to make explicit and specific what is elsewhere algorithmically insidious and ambivalent.

Comments

The definitive article is available on the DHQ website at: https://dhq.digitalhumanities.org/vol/17/2/000707/000707.html. 

Publisher Statement

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Whalen, Zach. 2023. “Any Means Necessary to Refuse Erasure by Algorithm: Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s Travesty Generator.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 17 (2). https://dhq.digitalhumanities.org/vol/17/2/000707/000707.html.