Abstract

Many scholars of digital technologies and networks have called “remix” the defining characteristic of digital culture, using it as shorthand for all that is new, digital, and participatory. ¹ This chapter offers a critique of such claims by comparing and contrasting the history of remix as an analog cultural practice and artifact with the discourse about remix in digital culture. It considers the use of “remix” in contemporary discourse as a rhetorical strategy and asks whether the assumptions and aspirations that underpin this rhetoric obscure the aesthetic priorities and the political implications of analog copying practices.