What is a Remix?
When the term “remix” is brought up, most people tend to think of music. While the term itself has its roots within the musical community, it also applies to literature and rhetoric. Remix studies is a branch of literature in which students study remix culture. Remix culture is a way to describe a style of writing or creation that encourages deviations of previous works through a mixture of combining and editing to create a new work or product. Remixes are not solely reserved for music and literature. Artwork, film, and many digital goods all contain various remix aspects. The following are just a few key terms which are utilized within remix studies.
Common Remix Terminology
Assemblage
“Assemblage is a method of composing wherein a composer builds a new text by gathering, repurposing, and redeploying a combination of already-existing texts. Remixers using this approach often weave together a coherent narrative or argument that does not necessarily correlate with the ways in which the source texts were originally deployed [1].”
Reappropriation
“Reappropriation involves making tactical changes to an existing text (or set of texts) to signal resistance or offer a critique of the original text or the concept for which it stands. That is, reappropriation is often used to challenge, invert, counter, or draw attention to oppressive discourse [1].”
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Optional Intertextuality
Optional intertextuality is where a new text, or hypertext, utilizes optional information from an original, or hypotext, in order to connect the two pieces. The author of the new text often includes information from the hypotext as a way to pay homage to the original piece of work. Knowing information from the hypotext rewards readers as they progress through its hypertext.
Imitation
“In classical rhetoric, imitation (mimesis/imitatio) was deeply connected to invention, style, memory, ethics, and being… This frame situates remix practices as inherently rhetorical, suggesting that composers have a myriad of choices, concerns, and constraints to consider before, during, and after they construct their texts and disperse them throughout varied distribution networks [1].”
Genre Play
“Genre play can be defined as constructing a text that blends, repurposes, or otherwise moves in and out of genre expectations. Signaled by phrases such as “remixing the book,” “remixing the essay,” or “remixing traditional scholarship,” genre play refers to the ways in which rhetors playfully re-conceptualize reified norms [1].”
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Redistribution
“Redistribution refers to sharing or adding to an already existing text for the purpose of reaching a new audience, offering an updated message, and/or spreading a text further. The chief appeal of redistribution involves drawing on the rhetorical force of a shared and common text, one that is already in circulation [1].”