Reading Post-Postmodernist Fictions of the Digital: Narrative, Technology, and Cognition in the Twenty-First Century

阅读数字后后现代主义小说：二十一世纪的叙事、技术和认知

• 批准号: AH/X001601/1
• 负责人: Alice Bell
• 金额: $ 36.2万
• 依托单位: Sheffield Hallam University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FX001601%2F1
• 关键词: Reading; Post; Postmodernist; Fictions; Digital

Within contemporary cultural studies, theorists increasingly detect a movement away from postmodernism's playful self-reflexivity to a more sincere, ethically conscious, and politically engaged form of post postmodernist metafictional play. In the gap left by postmodernism's apparent departure, "digimodernism", "metamodernism", "cosmodernism", and "post-postmodernism" have all been proposed as successors. While these perspectives each rest on a slightly different argument, the common idea behind them all is that the ironic self-reflexive devices associated with postmodernist art are no longer used to alienate the reader/viewer by exposing the artificiality of all narratives. Rather, post-postmodernist culture emotionally engages the audience with very specific moral, ethical, and political issues that are relevant to the real world. Within literary studies, scholarship on fiction after postmodernism has tended to focus on text-based literary fiction published in print. However, what is missing from that context is a thorough investigation into how digital media - as a manifestation of the current technological epoch and thus a prime locus of contemporary culture - are explored in and exploited by post-postmodernist forms of art. Moreover, while research often speculates about the effect of post-postmodernist fiction on readers, claims about reader responses to post-postmodernist fictions have not been thoroughly empirically tested.In seeking to fill these gaps in research, this project will investigate the prevalence, distinctiveness, and audience reception of what we define as "Post-Postmodernist Fictions of the Digital" (PPFDs), i.e., contemporary print fictions that imitate, incorporate, and/or utilise digital media, and display a thematic concern with the ethical implications of digital technology for society. In this project we limited our investigation to PPFDs written in English. Some PPFDs, such as Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2012) and Herman Wouk's The Lawgiver (2012) combine prose text with other semiotic modes such as visually represented e-mails, text messages, Skype transcripts, memos, online forums, tweets, and blogs. Other PPFDs, such as Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse's Between Page and Screen (2012) and Marisha Pessl's Night Film (2013), take the reader beyond the printed novel to additional material on related websites, apps, or social media platforms. The project will propose the new category of PPFD, create a catalogue of PPFDs, develop of a new typology of PPFDs, and examine the distinct and congruent ways that digital media is utilised semiotically, structurally, ontologically, and thematically PPFDs. The moral and ethical implications of PPFDs will also be investigated via a reader response research program which combines close readings of PPFDs with the analysis of associated reader data. Three empirical studies will be designed and delivered to assess the effects of post-postmodernist self-reflexivity with data gathered from online review sites, reading group discussions, and individual questionnaire responses. Overall, the project is thus designed to understand the self-reflexive ethics of PPFDs and to determine how the use of digital media impacts cognition. Project outputs include: a website, social media account, an open access catalogue of PPFDs, conference papers, journal articles, workshops, public lectures, and reader response datasets.

在当代文化研究中，理论家们越来越多地发现一种趋势，即从后现代主义的有趣的自我反思转向一种更真诚、有道德意识和政治参与的后现代主义元小说戏剧形式。在后现代主义明显背离留下的空白中，“数字现代主义”、“元现代主义”、“宇宙现代主义”和“后后现代主义”都被提出作为继承者。虽然这些观点各自基于略有不同的论点，但它们背后的共同想法是，与后现代主义艺术相关的讽刺性自我反省手段不再被用来通过暴露所有叙事的人为性来疏远读者/观众。相反，后后现代主义文化在情感上让观众参与与现实世界相关的非常具体的道德、伦理和政治问题。在文学研究中，后现代主义之后的小说学术研究倾向于关注印刷出版的基于文本的文学小说。然而，这种背景中缺少的是对数字媒体——作为当前技术时代的表现，从而成为当代文化的主要场所——如何在后后现代主义艺术形式中进行探索和利用的彻底调查。此外，虽然研究经常推测后后现代主义小说对读者的影响，但有关读者对后后现代主义小说反应的说法尚未经过彻底的实证检验。为了填补这些研究空白，本项目将调查其普遍性、独特性，以及观众对我们定义的“数字后后现代主义小说”（PPFD）的接受，即模仿、合并和/或利用数字媒体并展示数字媒体的当代印刷小说。主题关注数字技术对社会的伦理影响。在这个项目中，我们将调查范围限制为用英语编写的 PPFD。一些 PPFD，例如 Maria Semple 的《Where'd You Go, Bernadette》（2012 年）和 Herman Wouk 的《The Lawgiver》（2012 年）将散文文本与其他符号学模式相结合，例如视觉表现的电子邮件、短信、Skype 记录、备忘录、在线论坛、推文和博客。其他 PPFD，例如 Amaranth Borsuk 和 Brad Bouse 的 Between Page and Screen (2012) 和 Marisha Pessl 的 Night Film (2013)，让读者超越印刷小说，到相关网站、应用程序或社交媒体平台上获取更多材料。该项目将提出新的 PPFD 类别，创建 PPFD 目录，开发 PPFD 的新类型，并研究数字媒体在符号学、结构性、本体论和主题 PPFD 上使用的独特且一致的方式。 PPFD 的道德和伦理影响也将通过读者反应研究计划进行调查，该计划将 PPFD 的仔细阅读与相关读者数据的分析相结合。将设计并交付三项实证研究，以利用从在线评论网站、阅读小组讨论和个人问卷调查收集的数据来评估后后现代主义自我反思的影响。总体而言，该项目旨在了解 PPFD 的自我反思伦理，并确定数字媒体的使用如何影响认知。项目产出包括：网站、社交媒体帐户、PPFD 开放获取目录、会议论文、期刊文章、研讨会、公开讲座和读者响应数据集。