Alternate space–times in Robert Coover’s texts: some ontological questions
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the specificity of alternate space-times in Robert Coover's most challenged texts in terms of ontology and depict their ontological landscapes in the form of stories within stories or representations, such as descriptions of photographs, games, movies, and TV programs.
Abstract: Our reality or actual space–time is composed of highly complex and indeterminate but interconnected structures, and both natural sciences and contemporary literature refer to it as a world of pluralized rhythms and emergent potentialities, always becoming, in which values are relative and process-dependent. Aware of the discontinuity and relativity of any space–time creation, including our experiential reality and fictive realities generated by our minds, this article attempts to discern potential space-times in Robert Coover’s texts and depict their ontological landscapes. These ontological realms are often presented as characters’ self-generated fictions into which they get so immersed that they lose the ability to discern the real from the fictive, as they switch from one world to the other. This permits the protagonists’ momentary escape, but also causes their psychic fragmentation, blurring the distinction between fiction and reality. In the form of stories within stories or as representations, such as descriptions of photographs, games, movies, and TV programs, Coover’s texts demonstrate interconnections of fictional and real space-times, blurring their borderlines, and even collapsing into one another. Throughout his opus, Coover is raising questions about the nature of reality, being and becoming, including the query that concerns ontological issues of text and world, fact and fiction, creator and creature, and how does a specific space-time emerge, solidify, and evolve. Thus, the purpose of this article is to examine the specificity of alternate space-times in Robert Coover’s most challenged texts in terms of ontology.
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01 Jan 1973
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a reformulation of quantum theory in a form believed suitable for application to general relativity, from which the conventional interpretation of quantum mechanics can be deduced.
Abstract: The task of quantizing general relativity raises serious questions about the meaning of the present formulation and interpretation of quantum mechanics when applied to so fundamental a structure as the space-time geometry itself. This paper seeks to clarify the foundations of quantum mechanics. It presents a reformulation of quantum theory in a form believed suitable for application to general relativity. The aim is not to deny or contradict the conventional formulation of quantum theory, which has demonstrated its usefulness in an overwhelming variety of problems, but rather to supply a new, more general and complete formulation, from which the conventional interpretation can be deduced. The relationship of this new formulation to the older formulation is therefore that of a metatheory to a theory, that is, it is an underlying theory in which the nature and consistency, as well as the realm of applicability, of the older theory can be investigated and clarified.
2,091 citations
TL;DR: The role of the reader in the reader's role is discussed in this paper, where Peirce and the Semiotic Foundations of Openness: Signs as Texts and Texts as Signs.
Abstract: Preface Introduction: The Role of the Reader I. Open 1. The Poetics of the Open Work 2. The Semantics of Metaphor 3. On the Possibility of Generating Aesthetic Messages in an Edenic Language II. Closed 4. The Myth of Superman 5. Rhetoric and Ideology in Sue's Les Mysteres de Paris 6. Narrative Structures in Fleming III. Open/Closed 7. Peirce and the Semiotic Foundations of Openness: Signs as Texts and Texts as Signs 8. Lector in Fabula: Pragmatic Strategy in a Metanarrative Text Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Bibliography
978 citations
TL;DR: The relationship between order and disorder in the works of John Hawkes, Harry Mathews, John Barth, Gilbert Sorrentino, Robert Coover, Thomas Pynchon, Kathy Acker, and Don DeLillo is discussed in this article.
Abstract: Design and Debris discusses the relationship between order and disorder in the works of John Hawkes, Harry Mathews, John Barth, Gilbert Sorrentino, Robert Coover, Thomas Pynchon, Kathy Acker, and Don DeLillo. In analyzing their work, Joseph Conte brings to bear a unique approach adapted from scientific thought: chaos theory. His chief concern is illuminating those works whose narrative structures locate order hidden in disorder (whose authors Conte terms "proceduralists"), and those whose structures reflect the opposite, disorder emerging from states of order (whose authors Conte calls "disruptors"). Documenting the paradigm shift from modernism, in which artists attempted to impose order on a disordered world, to postmodernism, in which the artist portrays the process of "orderly disorder," Conte shows how the shift has led to postmodern artists' embrace of science in their treatment of complex ideas. Detailing how chaos theory interpenetrates disciplines as varied as economics, politics, biology, and cognitive science, he suggests a second paradigm shift: from modernist specialization to postmodern pluralism. In such a pluralistic world, the novel is freed from the purely literary and engages in a greater degree of interactivity - between literature and science, and between author and reader. Thus, Conte concludes, contemporary literature is a literature of flux and flexibility.
14 citations
References
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01 Jan 1995TL;DR: Welcome aboard navigation as computation the implementation of contemporary pilotage the organization of team performances communication navigation as a context for learning learning in context organizational learning cultural cognition.
Abstract: Welcome aboard navigation as computation the implementation of contemporary pilotage the organization of team performances communication navigation as a context for learning learning in context organizational learning cultural cognition.
7,699 citations
"Alternate space–times in Robert Coo..." refers background in this paper
...Recent work across a range of fields interested in this relation between texts and cognition (including cognitive science, anthropology, linguistics, and others), indicate that any theory of meaning relies on the environment as crucial support for human cognition, springing out from certain cultural contexts, pertaining to a specific space–time and the flow of larger changes in the scientific and social domain of reality (Dennett 1992; Hutchins 1996; Johnson 2006)....
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Book•
01 Jan 1981
TL;DR: The Disneyland imaginary is neither true nor false: it is a deterrence machine Set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real world as discussed by the authors, since everything is already dead and risen in advance.
Abstract: The transition from signs which dissimulate something to signs which dissimulate that there is nothing, marks the decisive turning point. The first implies a theology of truth and secrecy. The second inaugurates an age of simulacra and simulation, in which there is no longer any God to recognize his own, nor any last judgement to separate truth from false, the real from its artificial resurrection, since everything is already dead and risen in advance. Disneyland is a perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulation. The objective profile of the United States, then, may be traced throughout Disneyland, even down to the morphology of individuals and the crowd. The Disneyland imaginary is neither true nor false: it is a deterrence machine Set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real.
3,177 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a reformulation of quantum theory in a form believed suitable for application to general relativity, from which the conventional interpretation of quantum mechanics can be deduced.
Abstract: The task of quantizing general relativity raises serious questions about the meaning of the present formulation and interpretation of quantum mechanics when applied to so fundamental a structure as the space-time geometry itself. This paper seeks to clarify the foundations of quantum mechanics. It presents a reformulation of quantum theory in a form believed suitable for application to general relativity. The aim is not to deny or contradict the conventional formulation of quantum theory, which has demonstrated its usefulness in an overwhelming variety of problems, but rather to supply a new, more general and complete formulation, from which the conventional interpretation can be deduced. The relationship of this new formulation to the older formulation is therefore that of a metatheory to a theory, that is, it is an underlying theory in which the nature and consistency, as well as the realm of applicability, of the older theory can be investigated and clarified.
2,612 citations
01 Jan 1978
TL;DR: In this paper it is shown that Reel was wrong to follow the English tendency in describing the history of morality in terms of a linear development-in reducing its entire history and genesis to an exclusive concern for utility.
Abstract: 1 . Genealogy i s gray, meticulous, and patiently documentary . It operates on a field of entangled and confused parchments, on d ocuments that have been scratched over and recopied many times . O n this basis, it i s obvious that Paul Reel was wrong to follow the English tendency in describing the history of morality in terms of a linear development-in reducing its entire history and genesis to an exclusive concern for utility . He assumed that words had kept their meaning, that desires still pointed in a single direction, and that ideas retained their logic; and he ig nored the fact that the world of speech and desires has known invasions, struggles, plundering, disguises, ploys. From these elements, however, genealogy retrieves an indispensable re straint: it must record the singularity of events outside of any monotonous finality; it must seek them in the most unpromising places, in what we tend to feel is without history-in sentiments, love, conscience, instincts; it must be sensitive to their recur rence, not in order to trace the gradual curve of their evolution, but to isolate the different scenes where they engaged in dif ferent roles . Finally, genealogy must define even those in stances when they are absent, the moment when they remained unrealized (Plato, at Syracuse, did not become Mohammed) . Genealogy, consequently, requires patience and a knowl edge of details, and it depends on a vast accumulation of source
2,251 citations
01 Jan 1973
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a reformulation of quantum theory in a form believed suitable for application to general relativity, from which the conventional interpretation of quantum mechanics can be deduced.
Abstract: The task of quantizing general relativity raises serious questions about the meaning of the present formulation and interpretation of quantum mechanics when applied to so fundamental a structure as the space-time geometry itself. This paper seeks to clarify the foundations of quantum mechanics. It presents a reformulation of quantum theory in a form believed suitable for application to general relativity. The aim is not to deny or contradict the conventional formulation of quantum theory, which has demonstrated its usefulness in an overwhelming variety of problems, but rather to supply a new, more general and complete formulation, from which the conventional interpretation can be deduced. The relationship of this new formulation to the older formulation is therefore that of a metatheory to a theory, that is, it is an underlying theory in which the nature and consistency, as well as the realm of applicability, of the older theory can be investigated and clarified.
2,091 citations