Kultura (Skopje) (Sep 2015)
Wiring Death: Remembering on the Internet
Abstract
Online networks and digital media have been integrated into contemporary processes of dying and memorialization, changing the social context in which dying takes place and establishing new memory culture. This paper, thus, examines the relation between media and memory through the case of war dead commemoration in Vietnam. As tens of thousands of Vietnamese died in military service during the war, their commemoration has been an important issue both inside and outside academia. This memory of the harsh past continues to be transmitted, historically and psychologically, through generations. Considered to be a flexible, individualized, decentralized, a-historic medium, how has the media environment contributed to the construction, reconstruction and representation of memory in Vietnam? My central argument is that, with a wide range of users, and various tools and forms of communicative interaction, internet-based media enables actors who are not part of the traditional institutions regulating the discourses about the past to constitute remembrance beyond the official narratives promoted by the authorized agents. Also, within such electronic spaces, it is pivotal to highlight the dynamics of memory which overcomes the temporal and spatial distance between the situational of remembering and the past events which are remembered. This feature of online memorialization and mourning practices, hence, poses a question to the philosophy of personal identity. While the dead somehow live on through their online presence, how do specific features of online social networks affect the ontology and embodiment of them?
