The Interlocutor in Print and Digital Fiction: Dialogicity, Agency, (De-)Conventionalization

Astrid Ensslin

doi:10.14195/2182-8830_6-3_2

Abstract

Digital fiction typically puts the reader/player in a cybernetic dialogue with various narrative functions, such as characters, narrative voices, or prompts emanating from the storytelling environment. Readers enact their responses either verbally, through typed keyboard input, or haptically, through various types of physical interactions with the interface (mouseclick; controller moves; touch). The sense of agency evoked through these dialogic interactions has been fully conventionalized as part of digital narrativity. Yet there are instances of enacted dialogicity in digital fiction that merit more in-depth investigation under the broad labels of anti-mimeticism and intrinsic unnaturalness (Richardson, 2016), such as when readers enact pre-scripted narratees without, however, being able to take agency over the (canonical) narrative as a whole (Dave Morris’s Frankenstein), or when they hear or read a “protean,” “disembodied questioning voice” (Richardson, 2006: 79) that oscillates between system feedback, interior character monologue and supernatural interaction (Dreaming Methods’ WALLPAPER). I shall examine various intrinsically unnatural examples of the media-specific interlocutor in print and digital fiction and evaluate the extent to which unconventional interlocutors in digital fiction may have anti-mimetic, or defamiliarizing effects.

Highlights

This article was inspired by my current book project, which examines digital fiction through the lens of unnatural narratology (Ensslin & Bell, forthcoming)
A subfield of postclassical narratology looks at so-called unnatural narratives, which is something of a misnomer because the kind of narratives that come under this label are just as naturally produced as any other kinds of storytelling, and yet they are distinctive in how they push conventional boundaries and stretch the limits of logical thought
I would argue that the interlocutor as a form of extreme narration emerges from the unidirectional communication situation we typically find in print, and it is used to signal the monologic, inherently unnatural nature of standard, print-based literary communication

Summary

Introduction

This article was inspired by my current book project, which examines digital fiction through the lens of unnatural narratology (Ensslin & Bell, forthcoming). Digital fiction; unnatural narrative; anti-mimetic; interlocutor; dialogicity.

Results

Conclusion