Description
Book SynopsisZara Dinnen analyzes a range of contemporary novels, films, and artworks to contend that we live in the condition of the “digital banal,” not noticing the affective and political novelty of our relationship to digital media.
The Digital Banal recovers the shrouded disturbances that can help us recognize and antagonize our media environment.
Trade ReviewZara Dinnen clearly and forcefully articulates the importance of her new concept, the "digital banal," as well as the way it plays out across multiple social and aesthetic practices. Nothing could be more fundamentally important than the everyday, now utterly embedded in the digital. The Digital Banal empowers us not just to see ourselves as we now are but to become active participants in everyday digital life. -- Lori Emerson, University of Colorado, Boulder
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Thinking with the Digital Banal
1. David Fincher’s Grammar of Code
2. Jonathan Lethem’s and Mark Amerika’s Common Writing
3. Being Social in a Postdigital World in
Catfish and
How Should a Person Be?4. Twenty Years of Californian Ideology in
The Bug and
The Circle5. Refresh, Update, Wait, or, Living with the Digital Banal in
Chronic City and
Refresh Refresh6. Speculating on the Real Estate of the Digital Banal
Conclusion: After the Digital Banal
Notes
Bibliography
Index
