Digital Dystopia
«Black Mirror» and the End of Humanism
©2026
Monographs
XXIV,
122 Pages
Series:
Speculations, Volume 3
Summary
Black Mirror: a show, a museum, a prison and a video game with no discontinuity between outside and inside, self and other, organic and inorganic. This is our world, where technology, AI, algorithms and social networks prevail over individuals, annihilating the foundational autonomy, rationality and anthropocentrism of Western culture. The society of the future described by the British TV serial with gloomy, visionary premonitions, expresses in a paroxysmic way what we already experience: everyday dystopia. It is science fiction that is more real than reality. Scrutiny permits the perception of our time as catastrophe, but crucially also the understanding of what emerges from the ashes of humanism and modernity: trolls, sexting, cancel culture, predictive analytics and surrogates of the human. We are in the heart of tragedy, but something endures, is born and proliferates among the fragments of the past. Like it or not, Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror reveals the first glimpses of the digital dawn.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Series Page
- Title
- Copyright
- Epigraph
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Note on the English Edition
- Preface to the English Edition
- A reality to be prevented? A reality to play with? A reality that can exist without us?
- Preface: The story of all stories
- Chapter 1: Nosedive: Everyday life as dystopia and catastrophe
- More real than reality
- Trauma: The Entire History of You
- Psychological terrorism and nihilistic euphoria
- Dancing on the ruins, or ‘Hang the DJ’
- Permanent orgy and freedom on probation
- Wireless chains
- The clearing
- Extension of the realm of alienation
- The camera obscura
- Chapter 2: The expense of the grotesque
- For a theory of the superficial
- Eaten alive, from The Big Swallow to Vore
- The bodies that cross the black screen and what they find on the other side: The Blackdrome
- The return of Rachel: The memory-body or the possibility of betrayal
- Appointment at San Junipero: The recorded-body
- ‘Diaspora’ of the body: Instructions for misuse
- Chapter 3: Dawn in the woods where things have no name
- An analogical mirror
- Bandersnatch and game culture: Transmedia fetishes
- Hyperstition: An outdated perfect future
- Black Mirror: A dark, unplayable game
- Derealising reality: Easter eggs beyond quantum physics
- Interference as anticipation: The time of Interstellar
- Chapter 4: Shut Up and Dance: Sacrifice and the new flesh
- The museum, death and the perfect crime
- Sparks and drifts of modern times
- The invisible empire
- Filmic excursus
- They are and they live in us: Man is obsolete
- Opening: Destroy Black Mirror
- Postscript
- Bibliography
Speculations
Vol. 3
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
There are so many dawns that have not yet shone.
Contents
Details
- Pages
- XXIV, 122
- Publication Year
- 2026
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781803745183
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781803745190
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781803745176
- DOI
- 10.3726/b21921
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2026 (October)
- Keywords
- digital dystopia Vincenzo Susca Claudia Attimonelli science fiction game culture Bandersnatch Twilight Zone media TV serial dark web dystopia imagery post-humanism Black Mirror Digital culture
- Published
- Oxford, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, 2026. xxiv, 122 pp., 4 fig. b/w.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG
