Please join us at 5pm on 7 December in room S-1.04 for the final research seminar of the term. Mary Harrod (University of Warwick) will be presenting a talk entitled “Paradoxes of the Digital Post-Human in Post-National Screen Media,” followed by a drinks reception to celebrate the end of term.
Paradoxes of the Digital Post-Human in Post-National Screen Media
Since 2010, the post-nationalisation of onscreen imaginaries has accelerated exponentially thanks to streaming platforms. This development raises questions about how the resulting narratives construct or (de-)legitimise new subjectivities and social identities shaped by transnational cultural dialogue. As though reflecting the digital nature of their post-national circulation, on-demand audiovisual fictions repeatedly explore digital ‘post-human’ identities; yet, paradoxically, they tend to express attachment to the perceived materiality of human and by extension national bodies. In scrutinising this trend, we begin to apprehend some of the emergent anxieties and possibilities negotiated by post-national digital media forms produced across nations about technological changes they emblematise.
Mary Harrod is Associate Professor in French Studies at the University of Warwick. Prior to this, she was a Teaching Assistant at King’s College London, where she received her PhD, and at the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Gender Institute. Her primary research is in contemporary film and media history and theory and is tied together by a focus on cultural—especially gender—identity, notably in its relation to aesthetics and in popular and/or transnational modes.