Pictures in our heads: Politics of space, time, and memory in Polish virtual reality storyworlds

Abstract

This article examines the entangled politics of space, time and memory in the virtual realm of extended reality (XR). The illiberal right-wing Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) has been investing in the creation and dissemination of virtual reality (VR) content centred on historical themes since 2018. By mapping out the experiential geography of populism in virtual places, the article aims to identify the main features of this new immersive mode of politics. The article argues three main points on space, time, and memory: (1) in VR, places are storylived spaces that are conceived and designed by their creators to elicit a specific sense of place, accompanied by specific emotions and thoughts; (2) from an experiential point of view, the past does not exist in VR, only the virtual present, turning VR into a contemporary technology of myth-making and myth-living; (3) since VR experiences become integrated into the autobiographical memory, VR is a technology that shapes the self. In effect, VR storyworlds establish places for the embodied rehearsal of cultural memory narratives.