Van Alphen claims in the introduction to his book Staging the Archive: Art and Photography in the Age of New Media (2014), that "the role of narrative is declining (whereas) the role of the archive... is increasing... (and) has become the dominant symbolic and cultural form". In the same year, talkdeath.com stated that "over 30 million virtual profiles have outlived their owners". The year before, what-if.xkcd.com had predicted that the time when the number of dead Facebook users outnumbered the living ones would be either in the 2060s (if the platform begins to lose popularity in the way that websites tend to do), or around 2130 (if it retains its current universality). Either way, at some point the facsimiles of lives in this digital graveyard stand to exceed the number of people physically living. And what will these online archives tell us about the people they represent, and about memory, remembrance and the idea of a life story?
If, as Lyotard (cited in Van Alphen) claims, postmodernism can be defined as "a radical incredulity" toward the religious, political, mythical and scientific meta-narratives which serve(d) to "legitimize the pursuit of knowledge", then these archives of personal material stored online may be good examples of postmodern narrative, in line with his idea that narrative has a "modest" place in contemporary culture, no longer being meta- but instead rhetorical, performative - which certainly could apply to these collections. Social media profiles have more in common with an archive or database than with the "cause-and-effect trajectory" that Manovich (cited in Van Alphen) believes narrative creates. And within this way of representing the story of our lives to the world, which he describes as reversing the traditional literary/cinematic narrative "relationship between the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic", we find a new role for the 'reader' (viewer/user/stalker) - one in which numerous possible trajectories could be defined, based on his/her clicks, and not on a single path dictated by the teller of the story. Of course, each reader's journey through the information presented can be said to result in a linear narrative, but as Van Alphen says, "it is in the encompassing framework of archival organizations that... narratives are (now) embedded", which shifts the traditional writer/reader relationship from one of teller/tellee to something more like archivist/researcher. But an archive, in a postmodern society, can not be viewed as a collection of things to be collected and guarded by a passive archivist. Each of us has a constantly updating and expanding archive of recorded presence - with our loyalty cards and social media accounts and qualifications and passports and online bank accounts and CCTV appearances - which forms an identity that will outlive our physical bodies. Our life stories, or perhaps we should start using the term 'life archives', may well be accessible for as long as the technology which supports the record of them exists. In 2014, several websites including roadandtrack.com reported that a young man had encountered "the ghost of his parent" while playing an XBox game. The father had been dead since his son was six, after which time the young man left the console untouched for about a decade. But when he re-engaged with it, he found his father's record lap was still stored in the game, appearing as a ghost car that he was able to compete with. This spectre will last as long as nobody breaks the record - or until XBoxes no longer function - allowing the son to experience evidence of his father's actions on infinite repeat, unchanging and ultimately unsatisfying, I suspect, as memorials can be. But it seems like a decent analogy of the way we are beginning to encounter the deceased now - as ghosts, whose achievements and experiences will appear unexpectedly in the form of Facebook birthday notifications and new tags in photos, for example. So will this make us remember the dead differently? As the photographs and letters that previous generations have as keepsakes are superseded by this online content, will the way we remember each other be richer, if it draws on so many more archived items than have ever been available before? Or perhaps it will actually remove some of the need for remembrance, if the deceased's online presence continues to interact with us beyond their bodily lifetime. Further reading: Van Alphen, E. (2014) Staging the Archive. London: Reaktion Son finds his father's ghost waiting for him in vintage rally game Facebook of the Dead Facebook - The World's Largest Digital Graveyard
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Assistant 4/10 22-5-72 EB47212 PIERRETTE BEIGE 6B, £10.50 DB54363 PLAISIR WHITE 6B, £5.95 R00949-19 £16.45. £16.45 A deposit of £15 was paid, on the 15th of May 1972. The purchase (E/5365, with alterations) was priced at £25, leaving £10 to pay. An arrangement was made to call on the 22nd of May. The writer used blue ink. In my work as a study tutor to predominantly Arabic students I'm often prompted to reflect on the differences between a traditional faith-based society and a more secular one. I'm a secularly raised, secularly educated, atheist westerner, so it's really difficult for me to imagine not being required or encouraged to think critically, which is often what my students need help with the most. (Indeed, I struggled with choosing the word 'atheist' to describe myself here because, even though I feel absolutely no belief in any god, I'm reluctant to make 100% claims of any kind - I usually prefer to keep an open mind when possible, especially if the belief involves having to prove that something doesn't exist. I have used the word because I have no belief in any deity. I reserve the right to change my mind though, as I believe we all should, if presented with enough evidence to do so).
It has often seemed to me that the students I work with - while highly educated in their subject area, and sometimes a decade or so into extremely responsible careers which are shaping their countries' economic, political and scientific futures - are entirely unprepared for postgraduate study as it is in this country; in terms of self-motivation, independent study and critical thinking. Let's be clear at this point that I'm absolutely ignorant of what postgraduate study looks like in Saudi Arabia, for example, and that I'm basing my opinions here on my interaction with students, the questions they ask me, and the problems they have while studying. Perhaps an example would be a good idea at this point. A Saudi student I'm currently working with is studying for an MSc. He has worked for the military for over ten years, and teaches marine navigation and ship captaincy at a naval academy. A few weeks ago he asked me what critical thinking was, because one of his lecturers had commented that he wasn't demonstrating it in his written work. I gave him a few non-academic examples, which he dealt with well. He seems, however, to be unwilling or perhaps unable to apply the idea to academic study, and often asks me where to find 'the answer', or what his conclusion 'should be'. He is worried that he will be 'wrong'. It is my impression that he doesn't feel confident coming to a conclusion by himself, but prefers someone in authority, or a written text, to tell him what his opinion should be. He does not seem to mind if the written text or authority figure has evidence for their claim. Now, I do not suggest for a minute that students from societies governed in line with an organised religion are the only ones who prefer a straight answer to a question. I do not believe that all students educated in the UK, for example, have the tendency to think critically. However, I do notice in the majority of my interactions with Arabic students, and less so in my experience of being a student (during which time my peers have been mostly British or European) that there is a noticeable difference in approach. I feel fairly confident, too, in saying that critical thinking is probably not encouraged in societies which have traditionally relied on religious texts for their law-making and social policy. So it's with this experience in mind that I begin to consider what post-truth could mean outside of the usual Trump/Brexit/fake news context. Lee McIntyre (2018) writes about the path from the 1950s Tobacco Industry Research Commitee, which Ari Rabin-Havt (2016) claims was "created to cast doubt on scientific consensus that smoking cigarettes causes cancer", to the more recent misconceptions of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, in which 'the backfire effect' - identified by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler (2010) - caused partisans to believe more strongly in WMD after receiving a correction telling them that no such weapons existed, as well as the ongoing denial of climate change. We could consider, too, the recent phenomenon of flat-earthers - have they existed since before Pythagorus, Aristotle and Eratosthenes but are now able to share their ideas due to the increased communication channels of the internet? Or is this a recently reconsidered idea which might be linked to post-truth? It certainly seems to fit with what McIntyre is saying. I still need to finish reading this text, so this post is not intended as a summary of what McIntyre has written. However, the things I want to think more about as I read, as I interact with students from other cultures, and as I continue exploring the alternative 'truths' of the Ghost Box, are these: Firstly, is it possible that the logical conclusion of post-truth might look like a return to faith-based society, in which facts are overlooked in favour of "truthiness" (a term coined by Stephen Colbert in 2005, to mean that something has a feeling of being true, even without evidence to support it) or misinformation distributed to create a particular result or further a particular cause? I don't mean societies would become 'religious' again in the traditional sense. By faith-based, I mean a society in which the information you are told, and taught not to question, and perhaps even punished for questioning, is described as 'truth', despite evidence to the contrary. And how would that compare with traditionally religious societies? Secondly, how does that affect the reading of my reluctance to investigate the apparent 'facts' of the Ghost Box? What are the similarities between not looking for evidence to explain whether or not a wedding occurred, and the wider human tendency of confirmation bias? In a post-truth society, would it be morally acceptable to enjoy mystery, or would it be the duty of those who disagree with the manipulation of fact-dismissal to search for 'truth' in all aspects of their lives? More on this at a future date. (And yes, I'm aware of the irony of talking about confirmation bias when I've said I'm approaching this topic in light of my experiences and with a tentative conclusion already forming - I'm keeping as open a mind as I can and am absolutely willing to alter any part of this if and when necessary) Further reading: McIntyre, L. (2018) Post-Truth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Spherical Earth discussed in The Independent The rate was £2.50 B&B, room 17, June 29th and 30th, 1972. Number of persons: 2 Apartments & B'fast: £5.00 Room service: £0.10 Afternoon teas: £0.40 Carried forward: £5.50 Please leave your key. |