Fission-Fusion Cognition in Contemporary Film: A Case Study of Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock

Miranda Anderson from the University of Edinburgh/ University of Stirling presents a talk in the series "Current Research in Narrative Studies", the research seminar of the British and Irish Association for Narrative Studies. These seminars are held in a hybrid format, with speakers and audience from the Association membership around the country, hosted at York by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Narrative Studies.

Abstract:

Films present the expressive affordances of alternative sensory material worlds on screen, illuminating psycho-physiological phenomena through immersing us and providing a means of reflection. This talk explores ways in which as well as or instead of verbal language, all kinds of physical gestures and expressions, objects and environments, and music and dance, weave together narratives that constitute and constrain cognitive processing both in film-worlds and in our experiencing of them and of the world more generally. I will explore how through the interweaving of a range of such modes in Steve McQueen’s film Lovers Rock, as well as through its use of film techniques, it provides vivid experiences of the ways in which rich mixes of bodily and environmental factors compose the minds and selves of the people and the world depicted on screen, a phenomenon I term fission-fusion cognition (Anderson 2015, 2022).

Bio:

Miranda Anderson is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, Research Fellow at the University of Stirling, and Associate Lecturer at the Open University. Her monograph The Renaissance Extended Mind (2015) explores parallels between contemporary and Renaissance notions of the mind as extended across brain, body, and world. She is a general editor of The Edinburgh History of Distributed Cognition series and co-editor of four volumes exploring ideas and practices of distributed cognition between classical antiquity and the twentieth century (EUP 2018-20). She curated a contemporary art exhibition: The Extended Mind. Her latest publication on storytelling appeared in the RSE’s summer magazine (2022). She is now working on contemporary literature, arts and media.