Eternally present and eternally absent: the cultural politics of a thanatophobic Internet and its visual representations of artificial existences

Abstract

Have contemporary digital technologies as well as aesthetic and cultural approaches reinforced the simulacral representations of a thanatophobic society? This essay analyses the processes of data preservation and self-eternalisation that construct personal and social narratives that offer to the individual the illusion of memorialisation and eternalisation. It is in this context that postmodern and aesthetic cultural constructions provide an opportunity for self-musealisation avoiding a sociopolitical questioning of the regime of truth, and allowing, through a constant replay of the image, the construction of the illusion of humanity’s eternal presence.