Han reflects on communal disruption in the wake of and addiction to digitalization from different perspectives, one of which is the role of corporeality in the conceptualization of community. The term “digital community” has redefined the directionality of human relationships. It reinforces the paradigm shift in human values, including freedom (p. 10), possession vis-à-vis access…
Prior to my experiences in the US over the past year, I had never given much thought to my positionality within the Black identity space. I was an avid movie watcher growing up, and I’ve always felt a connection to or alliance with the Black characters in the western films and books I’ve watched and…
The rapid growth of information and communication technology can certainly bring challenges to archives and any theory/practice that is related to it. Internet-based services are capable of replicating all the functions of the archival institutions, as studied by Ivan Szekely. Most of the documents are available online in today’s world which makes them more user-friendly…
I find the way Angela Haas explains organization interesting, especially in relation to the relationships between database and narrative that Folsom and Hayles discuss. Haas clarifies her usage of subheadings, stating “Despite the use of subheading to facilitate spatially organized logics, it is important to read productive intellectual and practical overlaps across and between the…
Folsom reminds us of the inherent excess haunting both database and narrative: each requires a perpetual eclipsing of an out-thereness; a map of infinite possibilities that can only be illuminated one at a time, emerging from thresholds like phantoms. If databases provide bits and pieces rendered visible by a series of choices; narratives are the…
In contrast to Manovich and Folsom’s theorization of the database as counter-narrative and an autonomous entity, I completely concur with Hayles’s theory that the two are symbionts. Based on Mieke Bal’s elements of narration, which include actor, narrator, text, story, and fabula (p. 1606), I contend that narrative makes up for database’s shortcomings since the…
Although I haven’t read any of Ed Folsom’s other works and I believe he has contributed significantly to other scholarly discussions, I can’t help but wonder if he, like the theorist Lev Manovich who influenced him, is still adamant about his assertion of the autonomy of databases or if he would prefer to rethink his…