Literary topology: Modern science and contemporary American fiction

Brent Michael Blackwell, Purdue University

Abstract

This project develops a theory of reading that accounts for the complex conditions of language and culture after the holocaust. This theory, I argue, must be complex enough to account for the many inconsistencies of our practices as literary critics. Therefore, my theory begins in the realm of mathematics with the work of Kurt Gödel, who develops a formal and rigorous system that accounts for undecidability in mathematical logic. Undecidability deals with the truth-values any given system of axioms can produce. What Gödel proved is that there are certain propositions that cannot be proven consistently true or false using only the axioms of the system in which the proposition is derived—other systems must come into play if consistency is to be possible. I transplant his method into literary studies as a way to deal with interpretations and conclusions that cannot be consistently proven using only the traditional axioms of literary studies alone. I also utilize many concepts from the mathematical discipline of topology, particularly the concept of a Möbian space, in order to describe the kind of space in which literary production and literary criticism co-exist. I use three contemporary American Fiction writers: Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, and Kathy Acker to develop, illustrate, and utilize this new theory of Möbian reading. I use the fiction of Don DeLillo to illustrate the main points of this quasi-mathematical reconfiguration in general and to propose an alternative conception of literary space that satisfies these new conditions of reading after the holocaust. I Pynchon's fiction, I show that such a space, while itself unable to provide a consistent ground for analysis, nonetheless reconfigures analysis in terms of inconsistency in order to establish a method of reading that does not conflate or reduce the aims and protocols of either literary studies or mathematics, which would create a false sense of a safe, objective critical distance from that which to view post-holocaust Western culture. Finally, Kathy Acker's fiction stands as the testing grounds where this new kind of reading operates. This new kind of literary space is one in which, for example, the distinction between the inside and the outside of a literary text can no longer be established consistently. Likewise, the reader of these kinds of texts, then, does not engage them as objects of critical study, but becomes active participants in their fictional process.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Duvall, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American literature|Literature

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