Vol. 1 No. 1 (2023): MADSEJ

This Maiden Edition of Multilingual African Digital Semiotics and E-lit Journal (MADSEJ) is dedicated to selected peer-reviewed articles harvested from the second annual conference African Electronic Literature Alliance International Workshop Conference (AELAIWC2022) titled E-Literary Procedural Creativity on Digital platforms and Metaverse/création numérique procédurale de la Littérature métaverselle et littérature dispositive, virtually anchored from the Centre for Digital Humanities University of Lagos (CEDHUL).

This issue generally introduces the art of writing electronic literature, the theories that support its practice and the role of Africa in the 21st century digitality. This objective is premised on the social reality that digital media is decentralising digital universe called metaverse, transforming exponentially our worldview and society today by tilting towards e-literary fusion with non- literary, humans and Artificial Intelligence to produce an e-literary utopia.

This edition opens with the discourse of literary procedural creativity, meta-creative writing or distant writing, critiquing, reading and analysis employing theories and methods in Electronic Literature. Noticeably, in the Nick Montfort’s article, he explains the theories of computer- generated novel whereby authors use computer to practice the art of distributive writing under the aegis of programming languages. In this regard, authors play the role of a writer and a computer programmer in the same vein combining their writing techniques with computational techniques, emerging innovative new ways of producing narrative designs and prose to make work of arts set a utopia of human and machine interaction.

As for Philipe Bootz, the veteran theorist in the Electronic Literature, in his piece, he presented the theory called “Procedural model” and its praxis in the work of arts in four-dimensional aspects and the social situation based on a concept of a computer system. With illustrations and examples, he technically reports “procedural model” application and compares it with various pre-existing theories in the field of electronic literature to expose their limitations. The articleelaborates the semiotic dimension of Bootz’s theory and points out that the text of computer- generated productions is multidimensional and distributable. And at the end, Bootz redefines the electronic literature basing his facts on the Spinozist conception of the ontology of art works.

Davin Heckman’s article deviated from the theories and praxis of the digital literature, poetics of generative text and Artificial Intelligence to open a discussion on the future of digitality in Africa against the Western world’s socio-political antihuman interests. The article establishes the facts that Africa should benefit from the clashes of the world powers with Russia and China by focusing on developing its local digital infrastructures to free itself from the grips of the world powers. He iterates that African digital autonomy is capable of shaping the 21st century.

Ajah’s article contributes to the arguments that digital infrastructures are seriously needed in Africa to avoid obsolescence of African digital heritages and electronic literatures on the virtual world, equally signalling the need to classify the genres of the African e-lit in other to properly document it for the future. Ajah invokes new argument on the critical attention and exploring

African electronic literature broadly. Based on these facts, the article attempted describing and exploring the emergent African electronic literature and its subgenres with their evolutions over the time. Then, it concludes with lamentations similar to those of Heckman by highlighting the potentials of the African digital autonomy in shaping the global culture. Whilst, Charles Berebon argues in his philosophical article that another problem facing Africa is digital divide. This causes social injustices and inequality. Hence, such issues could be solved through philosophical and ethical analyses.

Moreover, Alan Bigelow provides a short guide for African artists on how to create digital literature using HTML5, JavaScript, React and CSS.

These articles cover all needed skills, theories with applications, techniques of creating African electronic literature and they call for the attention of the African policymakers towards building lasting digital infrastructures that will influence the global community, and an African society free of digital divide.

We appreciate all our authors who have taken pains and pens to contribute to this maiden edition of the Multilingual African Digital Semiotics and E-lit Journal (MADSEJ).

Editors: Richard O. AJAH and Yohanna Joseph WALIYA.