FACTOR is pleased to announce our next talk in the 2024-2025 academic year by Sophie James (LUMS, SPS, Lancaster University) and Professor James Cronin (LUMS, Lancaster University):

TITLE

Digital Dreamscapes & The Spectralisation Of Reality

ABSTRACT

Following arguments that the sociology of tourism extends beyond the movement of bodies between physical locations to include ‘mind-voyaging’ throughout cyberspace, we consider digitally networked horror consumption as a nascent variant of dark tourism. In this paper, the acts of seeking out and spending time in digital dreamscapes centred on the weird, eerie and abject – such as ‘creepypasta’, Reddit’s ‘r/nosleep’ and 4chan’s ‘/x/paranormal’ discussion boards – are theorised as journeys that endow the familiar with obscene libidinal energy. These sites do not offer an escape from ordinary reality, rather they enable some detail of reality itself to become spectralised and thus reinterpreted with a nightmarish dreamlike quality. Drawing upon and adapting a Žižekian toolbox, we consider the touristic appeal of digitally networked horror consumption as derived from an ontological incompleteness which, in today’s post-historical geographies of ‘nothing’ (where most places are mapped, commodified, and demystified), provides the fantasy of exclusive and uncharted territory beyond a finite, knowable universe. The possibility that the otherworldly might still be found within our world, albeit in remediated forms online, legitimises digital dreamscapes as the final frontier for dark tourists seeking out the unsettling, while their free-to-access and typically non-copyrighted content functions beyond the rationalising influence of capitalist realism. Although they ostensibly deviate from the overt commercialism that has come to contaminate most physical sites for dark tourism, these digital dreamscapes also seem to reject historical authenticity and morality, centring instead on mythology, simulacra, and sublimating the anomalous. Cybersecurity concerns associated with these online spaces arise from the risks of anonymity-driven misinformation, the spread of malicious content, and potentially, significant dangers for individuals with pre-existing psychological conditions who may struggle with the blurring of boundaries between reality and fiction.

TIME & PLACE

W12, 1500-1550, Thu 23rd Jan 2025, Welcome Centre LT1 (A34). (Please note that this talk will not be streamed or recorded.)

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