Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses approaches to the construction of socio-literary comunities and personae through a comparative study including different online platforms and social media, and Heian period texts, opening new possibilities and tools for pre-modern Japanese literary research.

Paper long abstract:

In the Diary of Izumi Shikibu和泉式部 (b. 976?), the Heian period poet and lady-in-waiting tells the story of her affair with the imperial prince Atsumichi 敦道親王 (981-1007), often referring to the accusations about its scandalous and socially disruptive nature raised against her by her lover's servants and attendants. Ladies-in-waiting are shown as particularly vicious participants of this process, and Izumi Shikibu is depicted as powerless at their hands, even though she herself had served in their midst, both before and after the events portrayed in the diary. It is the community formed by these women and those they have access to that create the system of circulation of texts at which mercy the poet finds herself; the very disruption of her affair, the nikki (diary, memoir) suggest, is embodied through these liminal figures who break down the separation between what is described as a concealed, socially ineffectual affair, and the visually available—and therefore, subjectable to open moral judgment and social scrutiny. This formulation of the powerlessness of the individual in the face of a group that punishes and rewards particular modes of self-presentation while creating their social significance within it is also denounced in interestingly similar ways by the 2019 video-essay Canceling, by the Youtuber Natalie Wyn. Her fall from grace within the internet trans community and the impossibility to control circulation of discourse are shown as products of the interactive community of creators and consumers that shape her own persona, in a delicate balance between the way between the contextualisation of her utterances and writings and the way in which she attempts to respond and redefine these words.

This paper will consider, using a comparative lens through these two case studies, how the construction and re-contextualisation of literary personae throughout different social media is effected by power dynamics between the authors and the often unnamed, individually irrelevant members of their socio-literary community to which their production is aimed; focusing particularly in the creation of text (nikki, video) that intends partly to serve as a tool for the negotiation of the creation of a particular public image.