What is Cyber-Consciousness?: The Digital Mediation of Sincerity and Parody in Tao Lin’s Taipei

• Main Author: Aislinn Clare McDougall
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Open Library of Humanities 2019-01-01
• Series: C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-century Writings
• Subjects: new sincerity; digital; cyber-consciousness; parody; post-postmodernism
• Online Access: https://c21.openlibhums.org/article/id/555/

This article explores Tao Lin's Taipei as a quintessential example of the twenty-first century 'internet novel.' Engaging with the novel's reputation both as a 'modernist masterpiece' (Lytal 2013) and one that features seemingly postmodern 'self-parody' (Garner 2013), this reading of Taipei introduces the term 'cyber-consciousness' in order to suggest that this tension between modern sincerity and postmodern parody is productively interrogated by digitality in both character consciousness and narrative form. This composting of modern, postmodern and digital elements produces an avenue through which we might come to understand the post-postmodern internet novel.