Unravelling the Intra-actional Postdigital Temporality of Touristscapes

Abstract

The current study proposes the concept of ‘postdigital temporality’ as a technologically enabled configuration of the intra-actional interplay of ventriloquized time-bound agencies. To this end, it draws on the model of ventriloquism and the postdigital concept of intra-actional agency. The notion of ‘postdigital time’ is a key concept in the paper, providing it with an entry point for interpreting the dislocation of agency as materially incarnated in a distribution of intra-acting agents across and between human and non-human actants by underlying the resulting reconfigured temporalities. This theoretical approach has helped recognize the emergence of the polysemiotic temporalities offered by the interface and appropriated by human actants in the intra-actional context of the Visit a City app. The result is a materialized another postdigital context of touristscape which is no longer temporally bounded to linear, portioned, clockwork activities such as shopping, visiting touristic destinations, or enjoying attractions but acknowledges permeable, fluid, and multiple practices. In this regard, the proposed ‘postdigital’ touristscape of Egypt, as presented in the app, is argued to be a ‘dislocated locus’ where various agentive entities and digital/analog activities make their own presence in the scene. The postdigital Egypt is encapsulated in a performative scene where time is somewhat disjointed, fragmented, and yet augmented; a scene where eventfulness seems to be invariably cohabiting with iterability.