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Ephemeral identities, blurred geographies, and social media in twenty-first-century French fiction: a reading of Licorne by Nora Sandor and Un amour d’espion by Clément Bénech

While digital tools and platforms have become part of our everyday life, authors of fictional narratives voice the emerging hopes and fears resulting from interactive digital media. In this paper, I analyze two recently-published French novels, namely Un amour d’espion by Clément Bénech (2017) and L...

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Autor principal: Sapino, Roberta
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8204069/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11059-021-00590-1
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author Sapino, Roberta
author_facet Sapino, Roberta
author_sort Sapino, Roberta
collection PubMed
description While digital tools and platforms have become part of our everyday life, authors of fictional narratives voice the emerging hopes and fears resulting from interactive digital media. In this paper, I analyze two recently-published French novels, namely Un amour d’espion by Clément Bénech (2017) and Licorne by Nora Sandor (2019), in terms of how social networks affect in new ways the processes whereby identity is built and negotiated. Both novels focus on characters whose development as human beings is prevented by the contrasting illusions of ephemerality and digital hypermnesia. I show that the way characters use social media entails a sense of virtual disembodiment that shapes their perception of their physical bodies and surrounding spaces. I also argue that their online activity as represented in the novels invites reflections on the archival values of images and on social networks as fragmentary repositories of the self. In conclusion, I discuss how issues of ephemerality and disembodiment affect narrative choices in both novels.
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spelling pubmed-82040692021-06-15 Ephemeral identities, blurred geographies, and social media in twenty-first-century French fiction: a reading of Licorne by Nora Sandor and Un amour d’espion by Clément Bénech Sapino, Roberta Neohelicon Article While digital tools and platforms have become part of our everyday life, authors of fictional narratives voice the emerging hopes and fears resulting from interactive digital media. In this paper, I analyze two recently-published French novels, namely Un amour d’espion by Clément Bénech (2017) and Licorne by Nora Sandor (2019), in terms of how social networks affect in new ways the processes whereby identity is built and negotiated. Both novels focus on characters whose development as human beings is prevented by the contrasting illusions of ephemerality and digital hypermnesia. I show that the way characters use social media entails a sense of virtual disembodiment that shapes their perception of their physical bodies and surrounding spaces. I also argue that their online activity as represented in the novels invites reflections on the archival values of images and on social networks as fragmentary repositories of the self. In conclusion, I discuss how issues of ephemerality and disembodiment affect narrative choices in both novels. Springer International Publishing 2021-06-15 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8204069/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11059-021-00590-1 Text en © Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary 2021 This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
spellingShingle Article
Sapino, Roberta
Ephemeral identities, blurred geographies, and social media in twenty-first-century French fiction: a reading of Licorne by Nora Sandor and Un amour d’espion by Clément Bénech
title Ephemeral identities, blurred geographies, and social media in twenty-first-century French fiction: a reading of Licorne by Nora Sandor and Un amour d’espion by Clément Bénech
title_full Ephemeral identities, blurred geographies, and social media in twenty-first-century French fiction: a reading of Licorne by Nora Sandor and Un amour d’espion by Clément Bénech
title_fullStr Ephemeral identities, blurred geographies, and social media in twenty-first-century French fiction: a reading of Licorne by Nora Sandor and Un amour d’espion by Clément Bénech
title_full_unstemmed Ephemeral identities, blurred geographies, and social media in twenty-first-century French fiction: a reading of Licorne by Nora Sandor and Un amour d’espion by Clément Bénech
title_short Ephemeral identities, blurred geographies, and social media in twenty-first-century French fiction: a reading of Licorne by Nora Sandor and Un amour d’espion by Clément Bénech
title_sort ephemeral identities, blurred geographies, and social media in twenty-first-century french fiction: a reading of licorne by nora sandor and un amour d’espion by clément bénech
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8204069/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11059-021-00590-1
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