Predictive Texts: Modern Mysticism and Algorithmic Divination

New media users interpret algorithmic technologies as a form of divination, creating folk mythologies about how algorithms work and narrating the significance of algorithmically-dealt content. This practice, termed algorithmic divination, reveals a longing for spiritual enchantment amid capitalist mediation. The modernist novel, particularly Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, is examined as an earlier instance of this practice, outlining utopian possibilities. In contrast, new media like TikTok and Netflix's Too Hot to Handle foreground the limits and failures of algorithmic divination, underscoring the incongruity of capitalism and mysticism. The work theorizes a technologically dependent spirituality and how identity and belief emerge online.

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Abstract

Predictive Texts: Modern Mysticism and Algorithmic Divination contributes to critical literature on secularism, literary, and digital studies by theorizing algorithmic divination, which is the process of interpreting algorithmic technologies in order to gain insight into one’s life and identity. I argue that new media users “read” the algorithms they are subjected to and create a folk mythology of how the algorithm works, narrating the significance of the algorithmically-dealt content they receive. Algorithmic divination betrays new media users’ longing for spiritual enchantment in the face of the capitalist mediation on which the algorithm depends. Taking a literary-critical approach to questions of digital media and identity, this dissertation considers how new media users respond to emergent technologies and represent networks as capable of holding omniscient power or foresight. I explore the modernist novel as an earlier, influential instantiation of this practice. Whereas the modernist works I read outline utopian possibilities, new media foregrounds the limits and failures of algorithmic divination, underscoring the incongruity of capitalism and mysticism. Focusing on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, “Manifestation” TikTok, and Netflix’s Too Hot to Handle, this dissertation seeks to understand a spirituality that is technologically dependent and further considers how identity and belief emerge online.