2020-05-20, 11(20 Trace Journal Page 1 of 11 http://tracejournal.net/trace-issues/issue4/05-wickberg.html A JOURNAL OF WRITING, MEDIA, AND ECOLOGY A JOURNAL OF WRITING, MEDIA, AND ECOLOGY New Materialism and the Intimacy of Post-digital Handwriting Adam Wickberg Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin (Published March 11, 2020) Introduction New Materialism and the Intimacy of Post-digital Handwriting After Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential elections in 2016, images of his signature quickly started circulating on social media. They were often accompanied by comments about the new president’s curious handwriting and what it might reflect. Suggestions of what Trump’s handwriting looked like included the sound wave of a screaming demon and the gates of Mordor. Perhaps social media users were just trying to make sense of the new political era in U.S. politics he inaugurated, but the fascination with handwritten text in digital milieus captures a phenomenon known as the post-digital condition. This essay analyzes three cases of the changing ontology and epistemic conditions of the practice of handwriting after digitization. It does so by developing a theory of post-digital handwriting, that is, writing on paper by hand which is then digitized as image and disseminated online. The theory draws on scholarship in media theory on the post-digital as well as insights from new materialism. The cases discussed are penmanship porn, bullet journaling, and the political signature, all phenomena which highlight the intimacy and singularity of handwriting as a physical and sensory practice reminiscent of the modern understanding of love letters. The peculiar phenomenon of “penmanship porn” can be found in online posting communities like Reddit, where users contribute and comment on examples of particularly beautiful handwriting. The notoriously slippery concept of “intimacy” is employed in this essay to describe the quality of emotional and physical nearness in the practice of handwriting, borrowing the definition from sociologist Anthony Giddens of intimacy as “a matter of emotional communication, with others and the self, in a context of interpersonal equality” (130). The relation of intimacy discussed here, however, is never direct but always an effect of the media practice and its trace as handwritten paper, whether it be one’s own writing or that of another. Furthermore, for the purpose of interrogating its coming into being, rather than presupposing two entities engaging in intimacy, I understand it to be the causal result of the intra-action of several entities. The concept of bullet journaling was created by digital product designer Ryder Caroll and is currently marketed to a younger generation as a combination of mindfulness and productivity system which uses handwriting as its method to navigate a post-digital life. This analysis shows how renewed interest in handwriting is produced through investment in physical affects like intimacy and closeness, which make them appear as singular when posted online. The same seem to apply for the interest in Donald Trump’s signature, which has been intensively circulated on Twitter and Instagram since he took office. Together, these examples reveal how, contrary to popular opinion in recent years, handwriting is not disappearing but rather transforming into a different practice, less tied to verbal communication and more employed as a visual phenomenon to invigorate the post-digital with the qualities of intimacy and singularity which it is sometimes said to be lacking. A number of books in the last decade has made the case of the imminent disappearance and death of handwriting (Trubek, Hensher, Burns Florey). A more nuanced account of the history of handwriting in relation to these changing conditions today is found in Sonja Neef’s work. In her