Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: A History of Gothic Studies in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 3.1 Gothic and Silent Cinema
- 3.2 Gothic, the Great War and the Rise of Modernism, 1910‒1936
- 3.3 Gothic and the American South, 1919‒1962
- 3.4 Hollywood Gothic, 1930–1960
- 3.5 Gothic and War, 1930‒1991
- 3.6 Gothic and the Postcolonial Moment
- 3.7 Gothic and the Heritage Movement in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 3.8 Gothic Enchantment: The Magical Strain in Twentieth and Twenty-First-Century Anglo-American Gothic
- 3.9 Psychoanalysis and the American Popular Gothic, 1954–1980
- 3.10 Gothic and the Counterculture, 1958‒Present
- 3.11 Gothic Television
- 3.12 Gothic and the Rise of Feminism
- 3.13 Gothic, AIDS and Sexuality, 1981–Present
- 3.14 The Gothic in the Age of Neo-Liberalism, 1990‒Present
- 3.15 The Gothic and Remix Culture
- 3.16 Postdigital Gothic
- 3.17 Gothic Multiculturalism
- 3.18 Gothic, Neo-Imperialism and the War on Terror
- 3.19 Global Gothic 1: Islamic Gothic
- 3.20 Global Gothic 2: East Asian Gothic
- 3.21 Global Gothic 3: Gothic in Modern Scandinavia
- 3.22 Gothic in an Age of Environmental Crisis
- 3.23 Gothic and the Apocalyptic Imagination
- Select Bibliography and Filmography
- Index
3.16 - Postdigital Gothic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2021
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- The Cambridge History of the Gothic
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: A History of Gothic Studies in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 3.1 Gothic and Silent Cinema
- 3.2 Gothic, the Great War and the Rise of Modernism, 1910‒1936
- 3.3 Gothic and the American South, 1919‒1962
- 3.4 Hollywood Gothic, 1930–1960
- 3.5 Gothic and War, 1930‒1991
- 3.6 Gothic and the Postcolonial Moment
- 3.7 Gothic and the Heritage Movement in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 3.8 Gothic Enchantment: The Magical Strain in Twentieth and Twenty-First-Century Anglo-American Gothic
- 3.9 Psychoanalysis and the American Popular Gothic, 1954–1980
- 3.10 Gothic and the Counterculture, 1958‒Present
- 3.11 Gothic Television
- 3.12 Gothic and the Rise of Feminism
- 3.13 Gothic, AIDS and Sexuality, 1981–Present
- 3.14 The Gothic in the Age of Neo-Liberalism, 1990‒Present
- 3.15 The Gothic and Remix Culture
- 3.16 Postdigital Gothic
- 3.17 Gothic Multiculturalism
- 3.18 Gothic, Neo-Imperialism and the War on Terror
- 3.19 Global Gothic 1: Islamic Gothic
- 3.20 Global Gothic 2: East Asian Gothic
- 3.21 Global Gothic 3: Gothic in Modern Scandinavia
- 3.22 Gothic in an Age of Environmental Crisis
- 3.23 Gothic and the Apocalyptic Imagination
- Select Bibliography and Filmography
- Index
Summary
Postdigital Gothic describes a mode of narrative and critical enquiry that evokes the unsettling nature of human and nonhuman actors interwoven within technological assemblages. This represents a turn away from the ‘Cybergothic’ fascination with the ghostly, immaterial aspects of digital media. Instead, Postdigital Gothic calls attention to hidden architecture undergirding the virtual. From sound and image compression formats to the secret algorithms that fuel social media, the digital realm is not an empty portal for ghosts, but rather a vault of manuscripts buried beneath familiar interfaces. The unspeakable manifests itself through the noise of computer glitches, compression artefacts and sonic disruptions. Those unwelcome disturbances signify our human entanglement with the nonhuman. This chapter begins and ends by highlighting cinematic examples of Postdigital Gothic narratives, first, in found footage horror, and then, in the computer screen horror movies Unfriended (2014) and Unfriended: Dark Web (2018). In addition to those readings of cinematic texts, a Postdigital Gothic interpretation of popular compression formats for music (MP3) and images (JPEG) suggests the usefulness of the Gothic as tool for understanding the interpretive work of machinic speech.
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- The Cambridge History of the GothicVolume 3: Gothic in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, pp. 323 - 341Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021