You Have a New Memory: On Hauntology, Mnemonic Implants, and the Problem of Memory in the Digital Age
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Authors
Jennings, William T.
Date
Type
thesis
Language
eng
Keyword
Memory , Hauntology , Slow cinema , Slowtime , Cyberspace , Nostalgia
Alternative Title
Abstract
The ubiquity of the internet since the dawn of the 21st century has fundamentally restructured our relationship to time, history, and memory. Motivated by fetishistic logics of obfuscation and illegibility, new media has externalized our processes of memory and turned them into synthetic, uncanny mnemonic implants — artificial memories collated and re-presented to us by ghostly algorithmic forces lurking behind the digital curtains of cyberspace. Beginning with classical theories of memory by the likes of Henri Bergson, and with contemporary cultural and political theory by Jodi Dean, Mark Fisher, and others, I outline a new philosophy of memory to account for a widespread alienation of the digital subject from both individual and collective histories; subsequently, I argue for the emergence of an alternative temporality - a concept I call slowtime - to counter the internet’s logics of speed and overstimulation. Through a dialectics of temporality, this research-creation thesis project uses slowness to interrogate speed, to resist the overburdening of time by late-capitalist temporal structures, and to reclaim the memory-image through the synthesis of slow cinema and the video diary.
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Queen's University's Thesis/Dissertation Non-Exclusive License for Deposit to QSpace and Library and Archives Canada
ProQuest PhD and Master's Theses International Dissemination Agreement
Intellectual Property Guidelines at Queen's University
Copying and Preserving Your Thesis
This publication is made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws without written authority from the copyright owner.
Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
ProQuest PhD and Master's Theses International Dissemination Agreement
Intellectual Property Guidelines at Queen's University
Copying and Preserving Your Thesis
This publication is made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws without written authority from the copyright owner.
Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International