Being and literature: The disclosure of place in modernity

Donovan Irven, Purdue University

Abstract

The dissertation develops an original ontology of place by reading Modernist literature (1864-1950) as a critical reaction to Modern philosophy (1641-1800), and builds a platform upon movements implicit in literature from which future metaphysical and epistemological inquiries can begin. Western metaphysics and epistemology have been conditioned by the Cartesian commitment to the ego cogito, primarily understood as a subject to which the world appears as represented in concepts or ideas. The postmodern and deconstructive criticisms of such philosophical foundations – and indeed, on the very notion of foundation itself – have become well worn, but have failed to offer a viable alternative, everywhere heralding the “end of metaphysics” while simultaneously carrying on metaphysical discourse as if unaware of their own dictum! Being and Literature: The Disclosure of Place in Modernity offers the ontology of place as an alternative to postmodern anti-realism, showing that Modernist literature prefigures the postmodern critical project and implicitly leads the way toward an ontology of place that would de-center the cogito subject from the heart of Western metaphysics and epistemology. We avoid anti-realism through the reading of Modernism, while developing the alternative placial ontology capable of responding the weaknesses of postmodern anti-realism. The ontology of place offered as an alternative to the Cartesian legacy operates on the principle of “oscillation.” This principle is a newly developed contribution to ontology, original to the dissertation, and rooted in close readings of Modernist novels, notably by William Faulkner and Robert Musil, put into dialogue with interlocutors from Modern philosophy. Oscillation accounts for the basic differentiation of things as they take shape in place. The relation of things, in their differentiation as the play of oscillation, determines the what-content of appearances in the world. We can thus agree that the signifier is arbitrary, but that the signified, in a radical independence and recalcitrance to our cognitive models, is not arbitrary. The signifier, even if arbitrary, signifies a real difference. This difference is explained by oscillation – the basic interplay within which recalcitrant entities in the world take on significance to other entities with human-like cognitive capacities. This basic play of oscillation is the occurrence of place, the basic unit of the emerging ontological picture. The dissertation outlines a general ontological platform from which more systematic explorations in metaphysics and epistemology can proceed, maintaining literature as a source of philosophical insight and conceptual innovation.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Smith, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Literature|Philosophy

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