The problem of ‘fake news’ stands at the forefront of contemporary cultural and philosophical anxieties about the misaligned incentives of politics, new media, and online identity. However, mistrust in the media is a perennial theme, constantly developed through the emergence of new technologies from the printing press and the camera to broadcasting and the Internet. In this course, we will explore the historical intersection of new media technologies with the themes of trust, paranoia, propaganda, and hoaxes in the literary sphere. In the rise of pamphlet and newspaper print culture in the 18th century (the so-called ‘Age of Disguise’), we will discuss the satirical use of media hoaxes to highlight a distinction between the ‘truth’ of a certain discourse and those who claim the authority to speak it. We will discuss how in the 19th century, ‘fake news’ develops from a form of satire – as exploited by Daniel Defoe’s insincere political pamphlets, Jonathan’s Swift’s faked astrological pamphlets, and Benjamin Franklin’s sham journalism – to a way of achieving literary effects (gothic, horror, terror, the Uncanny) upon the reader (e.g. Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Balloon Hoax’, the Great Moon Hoax and the Petrified Man hoax). In the 20th century, we will analyse the rise of state and political propaganda media in its various forms (art, painting, radio, cinema, news reporting), but also the ways in which new technologies had changed the dynamics of truth and credulity in media spheres (such as Arthur Conan Doyle’s intervention into the Cottingley Fairies photography fraud in The Coming of the Fairies and Orson Welles’ infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast) and the emergence of modernist and postmodernist ‘mock-hoaxes’ (such as Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire). Finally we will turn to 21st century modes of online culture jamming and culture hacking, and explore the ethics of authorial mis-presentation in the cases of James Frey and JT Leroy. Together, we will learn theoretical and intersectional approaches to these themes which consider the role of propaganda, hoaxing, and trust in constructing and negotiating the social categories of gender, race, sexuality, class.
N.B. Please note that there will be no sessions on the 2nd, 9th, or 16th of July. These missing sessions will be replaced by a supplementary block session on Saturday 17 May from 10:00 – 16:00.
Please arrange to purchase or otherwise access a copy of the following novels and poetry collections for this course: Jonathan Swift, "Gulliver’s Travels" Vladimir Nabokov, "Pale Fire" JT Leroy, “Sarah” The remaining poems, short stories, and secondary readings will be available online or via Moodle.
- Teacher: Paul Fagan