Theory
Maas en abyme: the abyss of meaning in postmodern paranoia
On Thomas Pynchon's 1966 novel, The Crying of Lot 49, this presentation was given for the Narrative 2020 conference put on by the International Society for the Study of Narrative in March of 2020.
Do it for the 'gram: the (hyper)real aporia of Instagram
In this paper, I argue that representation on Instagram is neither factual, insofar as it is an unmediated portal into a user’s identity, nor a fictionalization thereof, but instead, due to the site’s reliance on imagistic communication, an amalgam of the two – what Baudrillard calls ‘hyperreality,’ a world of the Lacanian Real, replete with mercurial, and often incomprehensible, affect. As a result, the line separating digital from experienced life, reality from fantasy, begins to blur and, in the process, users 'doing it for the 'Gram' must face the profound anxiety in the popular cliché, ‘life is but a dream;’ in short, Instagram forces each user to question: if my own images are a fictionalization of reality, can it be that my reality itself is but fiction?