LANA GERSHON
(Indiana University, Bloomington)
And Then She Texted “Its Over”: Breakup Narratives and New Media
Presented by CFS and Digital Media Studies
Breakups are unstable events — a collection of conversations that might or might not coalesce into a disconnection. How do breakup stories as a genre address the uncertainty at the heart of breaking up, especially when nowadays there are so many ways to end a relationship? The breakup narrative re-contextualizes other conversations and provides a frame for these conversations. This also involves marking each media used for each conversation that builds to The Breakup Conversation. The narrator often openly engages with the ambiguity at center of these entextualized conversations by venturing their own analysis of other people’s intentions.What their soon-to-be ex intends is often the central mystery, and central focus, of these stories. This talk explores how implicitly tracking media-switching might contribute to the ways in which breakup narratives are often detective stories about other people’s intentions. Ilana Gershon is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University. Her recent book isThe Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media(Cornell, 2010).