more futures than people

TFW a webcomic, which you’ve been reading for what is probably fifteen years or so by this point, unexpectedly recapitulates one of the major planks of your own academic theoretical framework, and does so via the staggeringly economical medium of a few panels of dinosaur clip-art:

Of course, the observation that all futures—from the most banal to the most economically and/or politically influential—are stories is merely the starting point of said theoretical framework*; it’s the implications of that observation (namely that they can be analysed and constructed using the same toolkit that is routinely applied to more ‘literary’ manifestations of narrative) that are important, at least to me. But that the observation makes sense to others (to whom I have not yet expounded it at manic length) is somehow comforting.

BRB, just gotta check whether the APA has defined style rules for citing webcomics…

[ * This is exactly the sort of thing that I like to imagine better-known and more secure academics also tell themselves at 3am in the hope of battening down the imposter syndrome long enough to get some sleep. Which probably indicates that my own imposter syndrome is rather less ‘battened down’ than it is, metaphorically speaking, left sat alone in the living room all night with a fresh box of snus and a four-pack of Mariestad, talking loudly to itself with the lights off. ]

Posted

in

, ,

Comments and pingbacks

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

To respond on your own website, enter the URL of your response which should contain a link to this post’s permalink URL. Your response will then appear (possibly after moderation) on this page. Want to update or remove your response? Update or delete your post and re-enter your post’s URL again. (Find out more about Webmentions.)