Graduation Date
Winter 2011
Document Type
Project
Program
Other
Program
Master of Arts degree with a major in English, emphasis in Literature
Committee Chair Name
David Stacey
Committee Chair Affiliation
Cal Poly Humboldt Faculty or Staff
Second Committee Member Name
Barry Dalsant
Keywords
x
Abstract
Individual and cultural memory are not just functions of information storage; they are, or were, reliant on repetition. In the absence of technology, age's position in that repetition is sacrosanct; this is embodied by the popularized "elder figure"-a figure of knowledge and cultural authority. But this changes. This paper examines the creation of "a more perfect post-human" in Afro-futurist fiction by charting the procedural removal of cultural authority from figurations of age, and the concurrent replacement of age by technology in the process of repetition that spurs cultural memory. The paper begins by investigating historical examples of technology's effect on cultural memory (oral tradition in particular), and then looks at how cultures come to prioritize iterative processes and the democratization of textual authority which technology allows. The study then transitions to an analysis of fiction in order to demonstrate various ways in which authors adapt and dramatize this replacement of age's significance by technology. Through the use of devices like the network and physical/digital created selves, the body itself is ultimately shunned. The paper concludes that technology allows for a reinterpretation of the self, or for the assumption of power to reinterpret oneself in a cultural context-beyond functioning merely as a replacement for age, technology drives a broad cultural democratization.
Recommended Citation
Angel, Will, "Iterative Identity: Age and Memory in Afro-Futurist Fiction" (2011). Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects. 2625.
https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/etd/2625