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Volume 4, Issue 2
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Abstract

Abstract

Memes have been described as textual forms of “(post)modern folklore” (Shifman, 2014: 5). Photos or short videos, they highlight current cultural phenomena, and they spread exponentially through person-to-person sharing on social media platforms. For this article, I created a corpus of memes that circulated in March 2020, during the first weeks after statewide lockdown orders were issued in the U.S. in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on Bakthin’s (1981) concept of the chronotope, I analyze a subset of these memes that specifically addressed the experience of time in confinement, illuminating two interrelated trends: the disruption of temporal order in the present and the projection of chronotopes of hindsight in which this present gets resolved as past. Through detailed textual analysis, I show that the memes reveal both a widespread sense of disorientation and a corollary impulse to mitigate it through the imagination of spatiotemporal realms. I argue that such chronotopic projections can serve as a response to temporary but profound uncertainty, caused in this case by the public health crisis in its initial stages.

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2022-11-25
2024-12-13

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Memes from confinement
Language, Culture and Society 4, 162 (2022); https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.22003.div
/content/journals/10.1075/lcs.22003.div
/content/journals/10.1075/lcs.22003.div
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): chronotope; COVID-19; humor; memes; pandemic

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