Download the reader (or get the book for free, including worldwide delivery) via INC: Institute of Network Cultures | Critical Meme Reader III: Breaking the Meme
When you want to say something about memes, it is impossible to escape having to situate them. What usually happens is that meme makers and thinkers fall back on two definitions: Dawkins (1976), Shifman (2014). How can memes be defined beyond their work in a way that is better suited to our current time? Building on this work – yes of course – but in a way that leaves space for the meme to breathe. Honoring its transgressive everchanging nature, instead of limiting it into a static framework it never chose to be in in the first place. For meme studies to truly theoretically evolve as a field, the meme needs many expanded definitions. The goal of Critical Meme Reader III is to break its definition open with different visions, and to keep it open – letting the meme choose for itself what it wants to stay, be and become.
Editors: Chloë Arkenbout and İdil Galip
Contributors: Enzo Aït Kaci, Gabrielle K. Aguilar, Hugo Almeida & Adalberto Fernandes, Ruba Al-Sweel, Morgane Billuart, Will Boase, Victor Chagas, Ray Dolitsay & Jasmin Leech, Gustavo Gómez-Mejía & Rosana Ardila, Seong-Young Her, Alexis E. Hunter & Tiera Tanksley, Manuel Hunziker, Zas Iehulee, Alia Leonardi & Alina Lupu, Charlotte Marie, Tyler Patterson, Elena Pilipets & Marloes Geboers, Sophie Publig, Gabriele de Seta, @ simulacra_and_stimultions, Ivana Emily Škoro & Marijn Bril, Socrates Stamatatos, Eero Talo, Aidan Walker, Phil Wilkinson and Liam Voice.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chloë Arkenbout and Idil Galip
METAMEMETICS
Metamemetics
Seong-Young Her
Towards a Sympoietic Theory of Memetic Evolution
Sophie Publig
Disassembly and Reassembly: Theorizing a Meme-Rhizome
Phil Wilkinson
Meme-as-a-process: A Phenomenological and Interpretive Approach to Digital Culture Items
Viktor Chagas
Meme M:)eme: Making Ditto Laugh
Liam Voice
MEMES AS RESISTANCE
Memes as a Cultural Remedy: A Critical Race Analysis of Black Memetic Resistance
Alexis E. Hunter and Tiera Tanksley
Minimum Wage Memetic Manifesto
Alia Leonardi and Alina Lupu
The Meme Remembers: Greek Queer (Me)#me_too Movement
Socrates Stamatatos
Brake the Meme Machine: Slow Circulation, ‘Z’ Gesture, and Pro-War Propaganda on TikTok
Elena Pilipets and Marloes Geboers
Lightwork: Black Memes’ Life Cycles and Fragmentation
Zas Ieluhee
MEMEMORPHOSES
Causality, Simultaneity, Touch: Apple of the Forest
Eero Talo
Images and Their Captioners: What Photographers Can (or Should) Learn from Meme Culture
Will Boase
How Alaska Could Become a Canton of Switzerland
Manuel Hunziker
13 SECRETS ABOUT MEMEBREAKING
Gustavo Gómez-Mejía & Rosana Ardila
MEMETIC INFRASTRUCTURES
How Would We Know What a Meme Is? Examining Know Your Meme and The Art Of Internet Culture Archiving
Aidan Walker
An Algorithmic Folklore: Vernacular Creativity in Times of Everyday Automation
Gabriele de Seta
The Manufacture of Humor: Memes and Machine Learning
Morgane Billuart
AI Can’t Meme?! How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love AI Memes
Ivana Emily Škoro and Marijn Bril
Bombarding the Meme: On the Atomization of Society and Meaning
Hugo Almeida and Adalberto Fernandes
Vraxar: How to Create a Disinformation Campaign
Charlotte Marie
THE CIRCLE OF MEMES
If the meme is dead, it has been reborn as an egregore
Gabrielle K. Aguilar
Viral Visions: Computer Lust, Toxic Pollen and Still Landscapes of Desktops / Sublimation (L) for Beginners
Ray Dolitsay and Jasmin Leech
Zahra Aït Kaci: The Knowledge Reborn
Enzo Aït Kaci
live fast die faster
Ruba Al-Sweel
Star Meme, UFO to the Center of Your Mind
Tyler James Patterson
The Last Meme
@ simulacra_and_stimulations
APPENDICES
Biographies