Media Smarginatura and Seriality

This essay explores how seriality has become a pervasive logic of contemporary media and cultural experience, extending far beyond traditional narrative formats. Drawing on the concept of smarginatura â€Â" a dissolution of boundaries derived from Elena Ferrante’s fictionâ€Â" it examines the ways in which media forms, platforms, and user practices have increasingly blurred and hybridized. The argument situates today’s complex and polymorphic serial forms within a broader genealogy, from the technological rupture of photography in the 19th century to the algorithmically driven platform environments of the present. Seriality is framed not only as a narrative strategy but as a systemic mode of organizing media production, consumption, and meaning-making. In doing so, the essay proposes smarginatura as both a historical process and an analytical tool for understanding the post-media condition:a cultural moment in which serial logics organize affect, perception, and attention across fragmented and interconnected environments.