Critical Meme Reader III: Breaking the Meme

When you want to say something about memes, it is impossible to escape having to situate them. What usually happens is that meme makers and thinkers fall back on two definitions: Dawkins (1976), Shifman (2014). How can memes be defined beyond their work in a way that is better suited to our current time? Building on this work – yes of course – but in a way that leaves space for the meme to breathe. Honoring its transgressive everchanging nature, instead of limiting it into a static framework it never chose to be in in the first place. For meme studies to truly theoretically evolve as a field, the meme needs many expanded definitions. The goal of Critical Meme Reader III is to break its definition open with different visions, and to keep it open –  letting the meme choose for itself what it wants to stay, be and become.

(PDF version freely available online)