The Digital Banal: New Media And American Literature And Culture (literature Now)
by Zara Dinnen /
2018 / English / EPUB
6.2 MB Download
Contemporary culture is haunted by its media. Yet in their
ubiquity, digital media have become increasingly banal, making it
harder for us to register their novelty or the scope of the social
changes they have wrought. What do we learn about our media
environment when we look closely at the ways novelists and
filmmakers narrate and depict banal use of everyday technologies?
How do we encounter our own media use in scenes of waiting for
e-mail, watching eBay bids, programming as work, and worrying about
numbers of social media likes, friends, and followers?
Contemporary culture is haunted by its media. Yet in their
ubiquity, digital media have become increasingly banal, making it
harder for us to register their novelty or the scope of the social
changes they have wrought. What do we learn about our media
environment when we look closely at the ways novelists and
filmmakers narrate and depict banal use of everyday technologies?
How do we encounter our own media use in scenes of waiting for
e-mail, watching eBay bids, programming as work, and worrying about
numbers of social media likes, friends, and followers?
Zara Dinnen analyzes a range of prominent contemporary novels,
films, and artworks to contend that we live in the condition of the
“digital banal,” not noticing the affective and political novelty
of our relationship to digital media. Authors like Jennifer Egan,
Dave Eggers, Sheila Heti, Jonathan Lethem, Gary Shteyngart, Colson
Whitehead, Mark Amerika, Ellen Ullman, and Danica Novgorodoff and
films such as
Zara Dinnen analyzes a range of prominent contemporary novels,
films, and artworks to contend that we live in the condition of the
“digital banal,” not noticing the affective and political novelty
of our relationship to digital media. Authors like Jennifer Egan,
Dave Eggers, Sheila Heti, Jonathan Lethem, Gary Shteyngart, Colson
Whitehead, Mark Amerika, Ellen Ullman, and Danica Novgorodoff and
films such asThe Social Network
The Social Network and
andCatfish
Catfish critique
and reveal the ways in which digital labor isolates the individual;
how the work of programming has become an operation of power; and
the continuation of the “Californian ideology,” which has folded
the radical into the rote and the imaginary into the mundane. The
works of these writers and artists, Dinnen argues, also offer ways
of resisting the more troubling aspects of the effects of new
technologies, as well as timely methods for seeing the digital
banal as a politics of suppression. Bridging the gap between
literary studies and media studies,
critique
and reveal the ways in which digital labor isolates the individual;
how the work of programming has become an operation of power; and
the continuation of the “Californian ideology,” which has folded
the radical into the rote and the imaginary into the mundane. The
works of these writers and artists, Dinnen argues, also offer ways
of resisting the more troubling aspects of the effects of new
technologies, as well as timely methods for seeing the digital
banal as a politics of suppression. Bridging the gap between
literary studies and media studies,The Digital Banal
The Digital Banal
recovers the shrouded disturbances that can help us recognize and
antagonize our media environment.
recovers the shrouded disturbances that can help us recognize and
antagonize our media environment.
