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

在当代文化研究中，理论家们发现了一种运动，从后现代主义顽皮的自我反身性转向一种更真诚、更有伦理意识和更具政治参与性的后现代主义元小说游戏形式。在后现代主义明显背离留下的空白中，“数字现代主义”、“超现代主义”、“宇宙现代主义”、“后现代主义”都被提出为接班人。虽然这些观点都建立在一个略有不同的论点上，但它们背后的共同理念是，与后现代主义艺术相关的讽刺的自我反省手段不再被用来通过暴露所有叙事的人造来疏远读者/观众。相反，后现代主义文化在情感上让观众参与到与现实世界相关的特定道德、伦理和政治问题中。在文学研究中，后现代主义之后的小说学术倾向于关注印刷出版的基于文本的文学小说。然而，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--如何被后现代主义艺术形式探索和开发的彻底调查。此外，尽管研究经常推测后现代主义小说对读者的影响，但关于读者对后现代主义小说的反应的说法还没有得到实证检验。为了填补这些研究空白，本项目将调查我们所定义的“数字后现代主义小说”(PPFDs)的普及性、独特性和受众接受度，即模仿、融入和/或利用数字媒体并展示数字技术对社会伦理影响的主题关注的当代印刷小说。在这个项目中，我们的调查仅限于用英语写的PPFDs。一些PPFD，如Sample的Where‘d You Go，Bernadette(2012)和Wouk的The Lawgiver(2012)，将散文文本与其他符号模式相结合，如视觉表示的电子邮件、短信、Skype文本、备忘录、在线论坛、推文和博客。其他PPFD，如Borsuk和Bouse的《在页面与屏幕之间》(2012)和Pessl的《夜电影》(2013)，将读者从印刷小说带到网站、应用程序或社交媒体平台上的额外材料。该项目将提出PPFD的新类别，创建PPFDs的目录，开发PPFDs的新类型，并审查PPFDs在符号、结构、本体论和主题上利用数字媒体的独特和一致的方式。还将通过读者反应研究计划调查PPFD的伦理影响，该计划将PPFD的仔细阅读与相关读者数据的分析相结合。三项实证研究将通过在线评论网站、阅读小组讨论和问卷调查收集的数据来评估后现代主义自我反省的效果。

Within contemporary cultural studies, theorists detect a movement away from postmodernism's playful selfreflexivity 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 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 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 andexploited 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 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 Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2012) and 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 Borsuk and Bouse's Between Page and Screen (2012) and Pessl's Night Film (2013), take the reader beyond the printed novel to additional material on 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 by PPFDs. The 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 questionnaire responses.