Free Speech and Digital Discourse in Nicola Barker’s "H(A)PPY"

Joseph Andrew Darlington

Abstract


Nicola Barker’s H(A)PPY (2017) depicts a dystopian future in which all speech is monitored and regulated. Politically dubious topics are flagged, metanarratives like religion and history are censored, and even words expressing heightened emotional states are marked as dangerous. Barker uses innovative techniques to visualise the warping of language under conditions of totalitarian surveillance. In analysing Barker’s novel, this paper applies the findings of digital discourse studies to the novel’s content while arguing that its experimental techniques reflect a distinct break from the digital information stream. Barker’s innovations are a formal route to escape the deadlock of our current politics.


Keywords


Digital writing; graphic surface; free speech; dystopia; experimental writing

Full Text:

PDF

References


Barker, N. (2017). H(A)PPY. London: Heinemann.

Barry, K. (2018). H(A)PPY. The Goldsmiths Prize. Retrieved October 10, 2019, from https://www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-prize/prize2017/happy/.

Coetzee, J. M. (1996). Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Crystal, D. (2007). Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dean, J. (2016). Crowds and Party. London: Verso.

Firchow, P. (1975). Science and conscience in Huxley’s “Brave New World”. Contemporary Literature, 16(3), 301-316.

Haldane, Ch. (1926). Man’s World. London: Chatto and Windus.

Huxley, A. (1932). Brave New World. London: Chatto and Windus.

Jansen, S. C. (1991). Censorship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jordan, J. (2017, July 14). “H(a)ppy” by Nicola Barker Review – Visionary satire of a new information age. The Guardian. Retrieved June 14, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/14/happy-nicola-barker-review-science-fiction-dystopian-vision.

Kirby, A. (2009). Digimodernism. London: Continuum.

Lovink, G. (2008). Zero Comments. London: Routledge.

Marcuse, H. (1964). One-Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press.

Marcuse, H. (2015). Liberation from the affluent society. The Dialectics of Liberation, 47-68. London: Verso.

Orwell, G. (1949). 1984. London: Secker and Warburg.

Ruland, R., & Bradbury, M. (1992). From Puritanism to Postmodernism. New York: Penguin.

Stoughton, C. (2018). Free speech and censorship on campus. HEPI: Occasional Paper, 21. Retrieved June 16, 2020, from https://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Free-Speech-and-Censorship-on-Campus.pdf.

Tonkin, B. (2017, July 21). H(A)PPY by Nicola Barker — Everybody Hertz. The Financial Times. Retrieved June 16, 2020, from https://www.ft.com/content/3a758f6e-67de-11e7-9a66-93fb352ba1fe.

Wachter-Boettcher, S. (2017). Technically Wrong. New York: Norton.

Warnick, B. (1998). Rhetorical criticism of public discourse on the Internet: Theoretical implications. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 28(4), 73-84.

Webster, H. C. (1934). Facing futility: Aldous Huxley’s really brave new world. The Sewanee Review, 42(2), 193-208.

Zamyatin, Y. (1924). We (G. Zilboorg, Trans.). New York: E.P. Dutton.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2020.44.2.99-112
Date of publication: 2020-07-14 13:48:37
Date of submission: 2020-02-13 13:51:19


Statistics


Total abstract view - 956
Downloads (from 2020-06-17) - PDF - 515

Indicators



Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2020 Joseph Andrew Darlington

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.