Alistair Brown
I am an Associate Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the Open University, UK, and a postdoctoral teaching assistant in the Department of English Studies at Durham University, UK, where I also work on digital research dissemination and impact through READ: Research English At Durham.
RESEARCH
My research interests are broadly situated within the digital humanities and literary studies. I am particularly interested in the ways in which literature responds to technology, and how literary theory can be applied to studies of digital media such as video games. I have published on topics such as postmodernism in video games, the representation of space in video games and novels, and video game aesthetics and literary tradition.
From 2017-18 I worked as a researcher on the Creative Fuse North East project at Durham University, supporting the creative, digital and IT industries to collaborate with universities.
RESEARCH DISSEMINATION AND IMPACT
I am the digital dissemination officer the Department of English Studies at Durham University, where I edit Research in English At Durham (http://readdurhamenglish.wordpress.com). With competencies in HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript I have developed numerous websites in education and research sectors. I have contributed various articles on online impact to the LSE Impact Blog.
TEACHING
I have taught and developed courses at four universities in the UK and internationally.
Currently I am Associate Lecturer in Arts at the Open University, teaching across a range of arts and literature courses. I am also a Postdoctoral Teaching Assistant at Durham University, where I teach on a various modules, with an emphasis on modern literature and theory.
Previously I was Course Developer at SIM University, writing distance learning courses and resources on Modernism, American Fiction, and Contemporary Literature. My distance learning textbook on Topics in Modernism was published in 2012. I have also lectured a course on Literary Theory at the University of Sunderland.
I am passionate about widening participation, and have led the Sutton Trust and Supported Progression programmes for Durham University's Department of English since 2014.
RESEARCH
My research interests are broadly situated within the digital humanities and literary studies. I am particularly interested in the ways in which literature responds to technology, and how literary theory can be applied to studies of digital media such as video games. I have published on topics such as postmodernism in video games, the representation of space in video games and novels, and video game aesthetics and literary tradition.
From 2017-18 I worked as a researcher on the Creative Fuse North East project at Durham University, supporting the creative, digital and IT industries to collaborate with universities.
RESEARCH DISSEMINATION AND IMPACT
I am the digital dissemination officer the Department of English Studies at Durham University, where I edit Research in English At Durham (http://readdurhamenglish.wordpress.com). With competencies in HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript I have developed numerous websites in education and research sectors. I have contributed various articles on online impact to the LSE Impact Blog.
TEACHING
I have taught and developed courses at four universities in the UK and internationally.
Currently I am Associate Lecturer in Arts at the Open University, teaching across a range of arts and literature courses. I am also a Postdoctoral Teaching Assistant at Durham University, where I teach on a various modules, with an emphasis on modern literature and theory.
Previously I was Course Developer at SIM University, writing distance learning courses and resources on Modernism, American Fiction, and Contemporary Literature. My distance learning textbook on Topics in Modernism was published in 2012. I have also lectured a course on Literary Theory at the University of Sunderland.
I am passionate about widening participation, and have led the Sutton Trust and Supported Progression programmes for Durham University's Department of English since 2014.
less
InterestsView All (19)
Uploads
Thesis by Alistair Brown
Textbooks by Alistair Brown
Journal Articles by Alistair Brown
In this paper, however, I ask how Jameson’s argument is affected by the emergence of a technological aesthetic which was born around the time of his essay, but that has only recently come to mainstream prominence: the video game. I look in particular at the Grand Theft Auto series, which represents the urban environments of late capitalism (and its accompanying criminal underground) through virtual “cognitive maps.” I argue that this technology offers a narrative mode that explains the individual’s situatedness in relation to postmodernism with fewer of the contradictions inherent in the literary medium. This is because, unlike a novel such as Ragtime, the narrative in “sand box” games like Grand Theft Auto is driven by the player rather than the author, and unlike printed literature it is not constrained by a fixed temporal structure. Whilst the computer game’s style remains symptomatic of the postmodern aesthetic (Grand Theft Auto, for example, is a heterogeneous pastiche of film stories and rap music), its formal structure allows the player to conceptualise their postmodern identity in a more active way than that facilitated by contemporary literature, according to Jameson’s original argument.
Book Chapters by Alistair Brown
Representing these concerns, Donna Haraway’s influential “Cyborg Manifesto” (1985) shows how in the cybernetic age we must think about the human, now the cyborg, from two points of view simultaneously: as a creature that has been produced by quantitative science, and as a personal identity that must be considered subjectively as a cultural product of society.
This chapter suggests that although the trope of the cyborg is a modern one, such a dual-pronged approach to understanding nature, and man’s place within it, is not entirely without precedent. In the Renaissance, writers on monsters faced a similar dichotomy in seeking to explain how they come about in a divinely ordered universe. As is encapsulated in Ambroise Paré’s work On Monsters and Marvels (1573), Renaissance naturalists sometimes argued that monsters were a demonic deception produced by human immorality. Just as the cyborg sees the world differently, and sometimes deceptively, depending on the artificial interfaces he or she adopts, so the monster seems more or less “monstrous” depending on one’s point of view. In part, however, they argued that monsters and the bizarre are yet more evidence of God’s fecund creativity. As with cybernetic sciences such as genetics, they can be explained as the material product of an organised universe. In both eras, neither a purely objective science nor a purely socially-constructivist approach suffices to explain monsters or cyborgs. Both are hybrid creatures, requiring twin perspectives to be brought to bear to explain their bodies and significance.
Posts on Edited Blogs by Alistair Brown
Book Reviews by Alistair Brown
In this paper, however, I ask how Jameson’s argument is affected by the emergence of a technological aesthetic which was born around the time of his essay, but that has only recently come to mainstream prominence: the video game. I look in particular at the Grand Theft Auto series, which represents the urban environments of late capitalism (and its accompanying criminal underground) through virtual “cognitive maps.” I argue that this technology offers a narrative mode that explains the individual’s situatedness in relation to postmodernism with fewer of the contradictions inherent in the literary medium. This is because, unlike a novel such as Ragtime, the narrative in “sand box” games like Grand Theft Auto is driven by the player rather than the author, and unlike printed literature it is not constrained by a fixed temporal structure. Whilst the computer game’s style remains symptomatic of the postmodern aesthetic (Grand Theft Auto, for example, is a heterogeneous pastiche of film stories and rap music), its formal structure allows the player to conceptualise their postmodern identity in a more active way than that facilitated by contemporary literature, according to Jameson’s original argument.
Representing these concerns, Donna Haraway’s influential “Cyborg Manifesto” (1985) shows how in the cybernetic age we must think about the human, now the cyborg, from two points of view simultaneously: as a creature that has been produced by quantitative science, and as a personal identity that must be considered subjectively as a cultural product of society.
This chapter suggests that although the trope of the cyborg is a modern one, such a dual-pronged approach to understanding nature, and man’s place within it, is not entirely without precedent. In the Renaissance, writers on monsters faced a similar dichotomy in seeking to explain how they come about in a divinely ordered universe. As is encapsulated in Ambroise Paré’s work On Monsters and Marvels (1573), Renaissance naturalists sometimes argued that monsters were a demonic deception produced by human immorality. Just as the cyborg sees the world differently, and sometimes deceptively, depending on the artificial interfaces he or she adopts, so the monster seems more or less “monstrous” depending on one’s point of view. In part, however, they argued that monsters and the bizarre are yet more evidence of God’s fecund creativity. As with cybernetic sciences such as genetics, they can be explained as the material product of an organised universe. In both eras, neither a purely objective science nor a purely socially-constructivist approach suffices to explain monsters or cyborgs. Both are hybrid creatures, requiring twin perspectives to be brought to bear to explain their bodies and significance.
Discover an exciting exhibition of robots, cyborgs and androids:
Meet some of the metal stars of the big screen face to face
Track robots through time and space
Enjoy classic Sci-Fi comics and books that have activated the imagination of readers for decades!
It will begin by exploring how android sexuality presents itself in the literary subgenre of cyber-erotica. Here the uncanny valley is exploited, rather than being an unsettling phenomenon. In Kaitlyn O’Connor’s bestselling Abiogenesis, human-like androids aspire to procreate, ideally through polygamous sexual relationships. This fiction presents non-human characters who, precisely because they are not human yet have similar sexual instincts, can satisfy the reader’s libidinal fantasies without worrying about any of the ethical problems of orgiastic sexuality that pertain in the human world. Cyborg sex seems to be safe sex, allowing alternatives because androids are non-human. However, thinking more deeply about the ontological implications of cyborg sex ought to make us realise that such encounters could, in principle, also be seen as incestuous, since androids, robots or cyborgs are by definition of their mode of production essentially (genetically?) identical to each other. Abiogenesis contradictorily acknowledges each individual’s similarity to his or her cousins, whilst at the same time emphasising their difference (in terms of sexual ethical imperatives) to humans. The fact that readers do not notice this paradox shows how easily the uncanny valley can – in literature at least – be transgressed.
Cyborg erotica thus points the way towards deconstructive readings of more canonical texts, since our perceptions of non-human others are clearly steered by language towards noticing some aspects of alterity, in the process neglecting others. For instance, whilst incest is a latent theme in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in Frankenstein’s production of a mate for the monster we (or Shelley) never entertain the possibility that the two would be incestuous children, sharing a common creator-father.
By demonstrating how incest is the absent imaginary of android stories, this paper will complicate the simplistic notion of the uncanny valley, and instead suggest that all too often we read of androids without a sufficient sense of ethical anxiety.
A game is not merely a succession of passively witnessed images, but an interactive experience, the narrative of which is restricted and conditioned by the virtual body behind the screen. When we consider Tomb Raider from a ludic perspective, we recognise that the (male) player is forced to occupy the female body in a potentially transgressive way. The fact that male gamers play in a female body, as well as merely looking at it, complicates the alleged gender stereotypes the game presents.
For example, Lara’s long legs are not simply objects of desire; they also condition the speed at which Lara can run and jump, mechanisms which are essential to successful play. A player is thus simultaneously conscious of her sexual representation, but also her unexpected but limited athletic capabilities, thereby situating Lara somewhat outside the feminine archetype her image alone might suggest. Whilst acknowledging that this does not entirely compensate for the way Lara’s body is still coded in a hyperbolically sexualised way, this paper will demonstrate the importance of thinking about gender in games in a way which distinguishes them from other, non-interactive, media such as visual art, film or literature.
It contains the result of an International Survey among 130 art and culture professionals like Nicolas Bourriaud, Charles Esche, James Elkins, et al that I carried out and special articles and interviews commissioned by Domenico Quaranta, Max Ryynänen, Michele Robecchi, Javier Panera, Alistair Brown, Stephen Knudsen, Mieke Bal, Jozef Kovalcik and Jamie Hamilton Faris.