“I, myself am the media.” The Aesthetics of the Self and its narrative modes in the Echo-sphere

The hyper-narrativity typical of our society might be conceived as a manifestation of the “Expressivist Turn,”1 previously considered a feature of modernity, now one of postmodernity “Aesthetics of the Self.”2 This phenomenon is related with a double shift: one occurring at institutional level, moving from information to communication; at individual level, from communication to expression. This paper focuses on the transformation of the concept of experience, as an effect of the social media. No longer merely reflected and narrated, experience is currently and intimately connective and immersive performance, a setting built for everyone and for every kind of event (a holiday, even a pandemic or a funeral). In this context, subject’s autonomy is limited to the ability to manage the game of mirrors among individual expressions, where the immediacy of emotions reigns and the stories are transformed into serial fragmentary, visual, spectacularised fiction, lacking a structured plot. In my view such a world can no longer be seen as an Infosphere,3 but as an Echo-sphere: a social forum, where narratives cross and collide, and concern for the objective reference to the truth of the story disappears and mutual trust declines.