The special volume of Text+Kritik with the title “The Subject of Writing: On Large Language Models,” edited by Moritz Hiller and myself, was published today. The cover is by Sean Cearley.
From the publisher’s description:
ChatGPT, LLaMA or Gemini: In view of the text production by Large Language Models (LLMs), the question arises at a very elementary level as to who – or what – is actually writing here.
The double standard assumption that has determined our thinking about writing practices up to now – namely that everything written is first read as man-made and that our so-called writing tools are always only passive devices – is up for discussion in view of the current Large Language Models.
This special volume therefore examines the status of the subject in two ways: on the one hand, it is a matter of soberly reflecting on the place of the human(s) in hybrid constellations of distributed authorship. And secondly, to calmly consider machines, which until now have only enjoyed the status of instruments, as subjects of writing themselves. The ‘subject of writing’ is intended to serve as a conceptual alternative that, on the one hand, transcends the merely causal, instrumental character of authorship and, on the other, undercuts the idealistic, romantic character of authorship: It is no more and no less than a variably occupiable place in historically situated structures of writing. It is, in a word, about the ‘scene of writing of great language models’.
If writing is no longer exclusively associated with human subjectivity, but is also attributed to machines, this obviously touches on elementary categories of literary, media and cultural studies. Is there a need to fundamentally revise some of their established assumptions, concepts and models? Do others – think of the postulates and programs of so-called post-structuralism – only reveal themselves to be fully applicable in this historical situation? For this volume, the editors have compiled positions that approach the question of the (future) subject of writing from different perspectives. This includes fundamental considerations of a theoretical and conceptual nature – on writing processes, textual terms and concepts of authorship – as well as media archaeologies of historical and contemporary language models, the analysis of their products, policies, techniques and aesthetics, and anthropologies of their practices or the legal status of their agents.
You can find the volume here.
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