Doing Memory in Digital Fiction: A Critical Study of Memory, Narratology and Digitality in Andy Campbell and Judy Alston’s Clearance
Submission Type
Paper
Start Date/Time (EDT)
19-7-2024 10:30 AM
End Date/Time (EDT)
19-7-2024 11:30 AM
Location
Narrative & Worlds
Abstract
This paper analyses Andy Campbell and Judi Alston’s post-apocalyptic digital poetry, Clearance (2007), by close-reading it using the critical tools/methods from narratology, and further examining it through the lens of memory studies, as it enables the engagement with multiple processes that relate past, present and future in diverse historical and sociocultural contexts (Erll). Digital-born electronic literature and its multimodal representations have been challenging the limits of reading and writing literature (Hayles) by taking advantage of digital computation (Wardrip-Fruin) or “technoeikon” (Shanmugapriya et al.) as well as creating interactive and immersive stories that demand “the reader to make a shift in their ability to approach and interpret such works” (Campbell). Situated between a narrative and a game, Clearance takes the reader/player on an experiential tour around abandoned landscapes after an apocalypse that resembles the space around in the real world and evokes a sense of familiarity; it results in what Alice Bell calls an “ontological resonance” - a “prolonged response and aura of significance” to the storyworld both “during and after the experience” (Bell). The authors analyse how the “visual noise” (Engberg) of the digital poetry contributes to the ontological resonance while also mediating “prosthetic memory” (Landsberg) of the apocalypse to the reader/player outside the storyworld. Accordingly, the study foregrounds the ability of a digitally represented space to mediate memory to the reader/player who observes them in the first-person perspective inside the storyworld using the concepts of sites of memory (lieu de mémoire) by Pierre Nora and survivor objects by Marita Sturken. The authors propose an innovative framework to critically read/play and interpret digital literature that will integrate memory, narratology, and digitality in an interconnected, mediated, and interactive space.
Key words: Digital poetry, digitality, ontological resonance, doubly situated, memory, prosthetic memory, survivor objects
Recommended Citation
T, Gayathri and Raj, Merin Simi, "Doing Memory in Digital Fiction: A Critical Study of Memory, Narratology and Digitality in Andy Campbell and Judy Alston’s Clearance" (2024). ELO (un)linked 2024. 6.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2024/narrativeandworlds/schedule/6
Doing Memory in Digital Fiction: A Critical Study of Memory, Narratology and Digitality in Andy Campbell and Judy Alston’s Clearance
Narrative & Worlds
This paper analyses Andy Campbell and Judi Alston’s post-apocalyptic digital poetry, Clearance (2007), by close-reading it using the critical tools/methods from narratology, and further examining it through the lens of memory studies, as it enables the engagement with multiple processes that relate past, present and future in diverse historical and sociocultural contexts (Erll). Digital-born electronic literature and its multimodal representations have been challenging the limits of reading and writing literature (Hayles) by taking advantage of digital computation (Wardrip-Fruin) or “technoeikon” (Shanmugapriya et al.) as well as creating interactive and immersive stories that demand “the reader to make a shift in their ability to approach and interpret such works” (Campbell). Situated between a narrative and a game, Clearance takes the reader/player on an experiential tour around abandoned landscapes after an apocalypse that resembles the space around in the real world and evokes a sense of familiarity; it results in what Alice Bell calls an “ontological resonance” - a “prolonged response and aura of significance” to the storyworld both “during and after the experience” (Bell). The authors analyse how the “visual noise” (Engberg) of the digital poetry contributes to the ontological resonance while also mediating “prosthetic memory” (Landsberg) of the apocalypse to the reader/player outside the storyworld. Accordingly, the study foregrounds the ability of a digitally represented space to mediate memory to the reader/player who observes them in the first-person perspective inside the storyworld using the concepts of sites of memory (lieu de mémoire) by Pierre Nora and survivor objects by Marita Sturken. The authors propose an innovative framework to critically read/play and interpret digital literature that will integrate memory, narratology, and digitality in an interconnected, mediated, and interactive space.
Key words: Digital poetry, digitality, ontological resonance, doubly situated, memory, prosthetic memory, survivor objects
Bio
Gayathri T is a doctoral scholar in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Madras. She works on digital fiction, primarily focusing on the nexus of memory studies, digital humanities and narratology, under the supervision of Dr Merin Simi Raj.
Dr Merin Simi Raj is an Associate Professor (English) in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras. She is the faculty coordinator of the Centre for Memory Studies and the co-founder and chairperson of the Indian Network for Memory Studies (INMS), the first national network in Asia under the aegis of the international Memory Studies Association (MSA). She is trained in Digital Humanities at the University of Oxford. She received the award for the best PhD thesis from IIT Bombay. She was invited as expert panelist in the recently held Ministry of Human Affairs G20 2023 conference on Crime and Security in the Age of NFTs, AI, and Metaverse. She researches in memory studies, historiography studies, Anglo-Indian studies, and digital humanities. She co-edited the volume Anglo-Indian Identity: Past and Present, in India and the Diaspora (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) and is currently co-editing the Brill Indian Handbook for Memory Studies.