(No) Conclusion

Abstract

Conclusions are supposed to offer readers a sense of finitude, and a neat wrapping up of all that has transpired in the preceding chapters. The conclusion of this book, however, must be that there is no conclusion. Just as some of the Wattpad stories of the first chapters have subsequently updated and changed, and the end of one collaborative serial on the Austen Authors website saw the beginning of another as well as a visual re-design of the homepage, online literary cultures are in a constant state of flux. Websites change and accrete and shut down; some stories begin, others are updated and concluded, while still others peter out, or disappear from the screen altogether. What is source material one day becomes discursive phantom the next, existing only as ‘saved’ versions of digital text that no longer exists. In Joseph Tabbi’s representation of electronic text, ‘[t]he page we are reading at any moment is only stable if we, while reading, actively make it so. No larger cultural or publishing concern is going to preserve the text for us.’¹