Abstract In this article I compare two stories by Yugoslavian author Danilo Kiš, “A Tomb for Boris Davidovich” and “The Encyclopedia of the Dead,” which address the problems and possibilities of writing a truthful history. Although the stories seem to contradict each other, I will argue that in fact they do not. Instead, when read… Continue reading Lauren Hoogen Stoevenbeld | Living a Dream: History and Fiction in Danilo Kiš’ “A Tomb for Boris Davidovich” and “The Encyclopedia of the Dead”
Category: 31.2 Fact and Fiction
Jantine Broek | “Back in a World I Understood”: On True War Stories about Women in Vietnam
Abstract In the West, we know the Vietnam War as a conflict where political, physical, and emotional borders frequently became blurred. This article focuses on the war’s role in literature as such a time and place of “in-betweeness” which requires a constant switching between fact and fiction to describe. It identifies two “unbelievable” narrative ele-ments… Continue reading Jantine Broek | “Back in a World I Understood”: On True War Stories about Women in Vietnam
Elena Lamberti | Fake News, Cognitive Pollution and Environmental Awareness
Abstract This essay pursues the idea that within our new media eco-systems fake news, trolling—and other forms of unethical pseudo-communication—are simply an updated version of the age-old idea of mythmaking. This is a phenomenon which could be better navigated if literature is regarded as a probing tool, as in the teachings of the Toronto School… Continue reading Elena Lamberti | Fake News, Cognitive Pollution and Environmental Awareness
Doro Wiese | In Formation
Abstract In this article, I investigate how the characteristics of information—speed, instantaneity, newness, impersonality—influence human perception. I contrast these characteristics with the artwork Moule by Anna Lena Grau, a work that slows down understandings and asks its audience to take their time in making sense of it. If an artwork slows down processes of meaningmaking,… Continue reading Doro Wiese | In Formation
31.2 | Grant Bollmer
The Sense of Connection, or, Complex Narratives and the Aesthetics of Truth This article explores fact and fiction in digital culture by linking “complex” or “networked” narrative forms in television, Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), and other transmedia forms of storytelling—with the persistence of paranoid models of knowledge and post-critical modes of judgment. It argues that… Continue reading 31.2 | Grant Bollmer
31.2 | Anna Poletti
The Fiction of Identity: Drag, Affect, Genres, Facticity This article considers drag as an artform that queers identity through its use of techniques of fictionality that explore and problematize the body as the material ground for truth claims for identity. It examines a recent controversy regarding the position of trans performers within the global media… Continue reading 31.2 | Anna Poletti
31.2 | Maria Boletsi
The Revenge of Fiction in New Languages of Protest: Holograms, Post-Truth, and the Literary Uncanny This essay probes the political force of the fictional in new languages of protest. It centers on recent demonstrations in various cities that used holograms to oppose the criminalization of protest, state control of public space, or violation of people’s… Continue reading 31.2 | Maria Boletsi