Friendship & Extended Sociality: From Recession to Revolution
Name of applicant
Marie-Elisabeth Lei Pihl
Title
Postdoctoral Fellow
Institution
University of Oslo
Amount
DKK 1,894,212
Year
2024
Type of grant
Reintegration Fellowships
What?
The project examines modern friendship through literary texts and culture and asks if and how a distinct form of sociality characterized by nonhuman actors is emerging: Are we, in fact, witnessing a revolution in friendship, rather than a recession, due to the rise of digital technologies and AI? The aim is to develop a novel theoretical framework for understanding friendship in the digital age.
Why?
While there is a growing cultural interest in friendship, it seems as if we have never been lonelier than today. In a Western context, young people report increasing and alarming experiences of loneliness, which have spurred on talks of a “friendship recession”. In the light of these diverging facts, I aim to shed light on how and why we form friendships in a world infused with online sociality.
How?
In an interdisciplinary vein, the project turns to cultural representation based on a view of cultural phenomena as reservoirs of insight in relation to human sociality and friendship. Specifically, it includes contemporary novels by Kazuo Ishiguro, who movingly has portrayed the nature of digital connection, alongside texts by Patricia Lockwood, Anne Mari Borchert, as well as films and TV-shows.