Abstract
The interrelations between literary studies, and posthumanism deserve attention beyond the focus on the representation of posthuman identities on the story level. To explore these, this article looks at examples of interactive digital narratives (IDN): Bandersnatch (2018), a ‘choose-your-own-adventure’-type instalment of Netflix’s dystopian SF-anthology series Black Mirror, the short film The Angry River (2017), which employs gaze-detection technology to determine what viewers get to see, and the serious multi-platform videogame The Climate Trail (2019), specifically designed to move players ‘into action’. Straddling the border between ludology and narrative to varying degrees, all offer the chance of ‘do overs’ and the exploration of complex patterns and processes. They raise questions about the co-production of pre-scripted meanings, about authorial and reader agency, conceptions of control, closure, and narrative (un)reliability. Thus, this article argues, they challenge ideas about the potential of narratives in and beyond posthuman digital environments.
Highlights
Narratology and posthumanism have been slow to interact
While research into interactive digital narratives (IDN) has emerged into a thriving discipline in its own right, literary theory, narratology, digital media, and game studies remain separate yet interconnected fields in which there is no shortage of scholarship
I will conclude with the suggestion that while the readers’ sense of narrative closure, reliability, and control might be in ruins, therein lies both potential and threat, especially if the respective IDNs engage with pressing ecocritical and posthumanist concerns such as climate change and human agency on the story and on a meta-level
Summary
Narratology and posthumanism have been slow to interact. Considering the ubiquity of studies dedicated to the depiction of posthuman identities in fictional narratives, this opening claim might sound contradictory.
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