The erotics of gossip: fictocriticism, performativity, technology.

This chapter focuses on The Erotics of Gossip, a radio piece by Hazel Smith and Roger Dean commissioned in 2001 for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Listening Room programme. The piece explores the positive and negative ways in which gossip is viewed in western and non-western cultures, and suggests that it can be creative or destructive, ethical or unethical, depending on its cultural context. The Erotics of Gossip is a sound technodrama, a hybrid and discontinuous form that mixes performance, sound, technology, and different genres writing. The chapter argues that The Erotics of Gossip explores the contradictory faces of gossip through the superimposition of different contemporary writing environments, from poetry, fiction, and drama to digital transformations of words and voice in 'voicescapes'. It also proposes that The Erotics of Gossip comprises a distinct genre 'performative fictocritism'. Fictocriticism juxtaposes creative and academic writing environments and breaks down their separation and autonomy. The Erotics of Gossip is fictocritical because it draws on the academic literature about gossip arising out of the disciplines of history, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, communications theory, cultural theory, and literature, and juxtaposes or merges allusions to that academic literature with creative writing. It is performative because it is an off-the-page work with dramatic and technological elements designed for radio, rather than an on-the-page work designed only for reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]