Containment Breach: Exploring the Intersections of Narrative and Database from Encyclopédie to Wiki
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2017
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Haverford College. Department of English
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Award
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
While many think of the database as a culturally-neutral object that exists solely to retrieve data, this paper examines historical and literary examples of the database as an agent of narrative. It is crucial to understand these underlying narratives because of the tangible consequences that arise when narrative remains unmarked within the database and to understand how literary works deliberately use the database form to construct narratives characterized by their non-linearity, multiplicity, and collectivity. In order to illustrate this important relationship, this paper covers the narrative-database debate as vocalized by Hayles and Manovich, ultimately siding with Hayles and her view of the two as symbionts. From there, it discusses examples of narrative present in dictionaries and encyclopedias from the 18th century to the 20th century, followed by a look at how a notable literary example, Pavic’s The Dictionary of the Khazars, presents narrative in the form of a dictionary. Finally, the bulk of this article focuses on the 21st century wiki format and of a monumental and ongoing collective literary endeavor, the SCP Foundation wiki. The SCP Foundation presents a unique challenge to traditional conceptions of narrative because of the experimental narratives produced by mimicking the database, the site’s preoccupation with its own larger narrative and with archival narrative more generally, and for the site’s radical intercanonicity, determined both through site-specific canons and by a broader, hegemonic conception of canon that dictates which narratives are privileged over others.