
Middlebrow 2.0 and the Digital Affect
Online Reading Communities of the New Nigerian Novel
Hannah Pardey(Author)
Liverpool University Press
Published on 3. October 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
232 pages
978-1-83624-556-8 (ISBN)
Description
Ebook available to libraries exclusively as part of the JSTOR Path to Open initiative.
Middlebrow 2.0 and the Digital Affect investigates the material conditions of producing, distributing and consuming the postcolonial in the Internet era. Bridging the gap between postcolonial and middlebrow studies, the digital humanities and the history of emotions, it employs corpus linguistics software to scrutinise more than 15,000 online responses to 20 new Nigerian novels, unearthing the patterns of affect that characterise the contemporary digital milieu of literary transmission. Building on materialist, social constructionist and linguistic approaches to community and emotion, the study illustrates how Amazon, Goodreads and YouTube capitalise on socially oriented cross-border reading practices by creating empathic communities of ethnically diverse yet socially balanced readers who use social media to fashion themselves as emotionally receptive members of a globalising middle-class formation. Offering a reproducible method for exploring new forms of postcolonial reader engagement that strengthens the postcolonial analysis of inclusion and exclusion, the book shows that the digital mediation of postcolonial literatures functions to appropriate various markers of identity and difference to the standards of bourgeois literary culture. The results highlight that the digital literary economy proves inclusive of the postcolonial Other, but only with full reserve to middle-class norms and values.
Middlebrow 2.0 and the Digital Affect investigates the material conditions of producing, distributing and consuming the postcolonial in the Internet era. Bridging the gap between postcolonial and middlebrow studies, the digital humanities and the history of emotions, it employs corpus linguistics software to scrutinise more than 15,000 online responses to 20 new Nigerian novels, unearthing the patterns of affect that characterise the contemporary digital milieu of literary transmission. Building on materialist, social constructionist and linguistic approaches to community and emotion, the study illustrates how Amazon, Goodreads and YouTube capitalise on socially oriented cross-border reading practices by creating empathic communities of ethnically diverse yet socially balanced readers who use social media to fashion themselves as emotionally receptive members of a globalising middle-class formation. Offering a reproducible method for exploring new forms of postcolonial reader engagement that strengthens the postcolonial analysis of inclusion and exclusion, the book shows that the digital mediation of postcolonial literatures functions to appropriate various markers of identity and difference to the standards of bourgeois literary culture. The results highlight that the digital literary economy proves inclusive of the postcolonial Other, but only with full reserve to middle-class norms and values.
Reviews / Votes
"This book makes very strong arguments that I look forward to citing in my own future work. The book's focus on emotion and the materiality of the digital is particularly welcome, and exactly what the field needs." - Beth DriscollMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Liverpool
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-83624-556-8 (9781836245568)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Hannah Pardey is a Lecturer and Post-Doctoral Researcher at Leibniz University.
Content
Preface and
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
and Tables
List of
Abbreviations and Notations
1.
Introduction: The Digital Milieu of Literary Transmission
2.
The New Nigerian Novel as Middlebrow: Materialist and Narratological
Approaches
3.
Algorithms of Affect: The Digital Literary Economy
4.
Communities 2.0: Reviewers, Reading Habits and Digital Labour
5.
The Verbal Performance of Affect: Emotion Terms and Patterns
6.
Coda: Revisiting the Digital Affect
Appendix
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
and Tables
List of
Abbreviations and Notations
1.
Introduction: The Digital Milieu of Literary Transmission
2.
The New Nigerian Novel as Middlebrow: Materialist and Narratological
Approaches
3.
Algorithms of Affect: The Digital Literary Economy
4.
Communities 2.0: Reviewers, Reading Habits and Digital Labour
5.
The Verbal Performance of Affect: Emotion Terms and Patterns
6.
Coda: Revisiting the Digital Affect
Appendix
Bibliography
Index