The Digital Banal: New Media and American Literature and Culture

The Digital Banal examines how novelists and filmmakers narrate and depict banal use of everyday technologies, such as waiting for e-mail, watching eBay bids, programming as work, and worrying about numbers of social media likes, friends, and followers. It argues that we live in the condition of the "digital banal," not noticing the affective and political novelty of our relationship to digital media. The works of these writers and artists offer ways of resisting the effects of new technologies and seeing the digital banal as a politics of suppression.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 23 November 2021
Publisher: Columbia University Press

The media has a significant impact on contemporary culture, yet digital media has become increasingly banal, making it difficult for us to recognize their novelty and the extent of the social changes they have brought about. When we examine the ways in which novelists and filmmakers narrate and depict the banal use of everyday technologies, what insights can we gain about our media environment? How do we encounter our own media use in situations such as waiting for emails, watching eBay bids, programming as work, and worrying about the number of social media likes, friends, and followers?

Zara Dinnen explores this topic in her book "The Digital Banal," arguing that we live in a condition of the "digital banal," where we fail to notice the affective and political novelty of our relationship to digital media. Dinnen analyzes a range of prominent contemporary novels, films, and artworks to make her case. Authors such as Jennifer Egan, Dave Eggers, Sheila Heti, Jonathan Lethem, Gary Shteyngart, Colson Whitehead, Mark Amerika, Ellen Ullman, and Danica Novgorodoff, as well as films such as "The Social Network" and "Catfish," critique and reveal the ways in which digital labor isolates individuals, how programming has become an operation of power, and the continuation of the "Californian ideology," which has folded the radical into the rote and the imaginary into the mundane.

Through their works, these writers and artists offer ways of resisting the more troubling aspects of the effects of new technologies and provide timely methods for seeing the digital banal as a politics of suppression. Dinnen's book bridges the gap between literary studies and media studies, recovering the shrouded disturbances that can help us recognize and antagonize our media environment.

In conclusion, the media has a profound impact on contemporary culture, and digital media has become increasingly banal. By examining the ways in which novelists and filmmakers depict the banal use of everyday technologies, we can gain insights into our media environment and develop methods for resisting the negative effects of new technologies. "The Digital Banal" by Zara Dinnen is a valuable contribution to this field, offering a timely and insightful analysis of the ways in which digital media shape our lives.

Weight: 362g
Dimension: 153 x 229 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780231184298