“What is Your Story Now? Life Narrative under Threat in Douglas Coupland’s ‘Extreme Present’”

The article explores the interconnected issues of identity formation and life narrative through an interdisciplinary lens in order to grasp the influence played by the Internet and digital technologies on the way we construct ourselves as a story. In particular, the erosion of the concept of the self as closed system or, rather, as coherent text or bounded book, in the frequent analogy with literature, is increasingly observed. As well, a progressive de-narrativisation in the process of identity (re)presentation online is being seen as a result of the additive logic (typical of databases) with which we plaster the web with our own personal data. But while some authors welcome the new forms of self-construction as more performative and agential, others, such as Douglas Coupland, on whom the article is focused, fear that we are gradually being stripped of our own story, individuality, and humanness.