Changing dominants, changing features? The fiction/nonfiction distinction in contemporary literary and Instagram narratives

This essay explores the reframing of the fiction/nonfiction distinction in light of the changing cultural dominant in the literary period succeeding postmodernism. It investigates the connection between sincerity, intersubjectivity and the breaking down of the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction in hybrid-genre narratives such as memoirs and autofictional novels. It then focuses on the link between these literary narratives and digital media presenting a study of social media platform Instagram as a (possible) prolific area of an emergent post-postmodernism. This exploration is further illustrated through the rhetorical analysis of Michael Chabon’s Instagram feed. Finally, this essay calls attention to how the blurring of the fiction/nonfiction distinction is becoming a technique employed to foreground issues of sincerity and intersubjective author-audience communication rather than of postmodern ontology.