scholarly journals Kartezjusz — Lyotard — Dukaj. „Perfekcyjna niedoskonałość” jako propozycja oświecenia po uznaniu końca paradygmatu wielkich narracji

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 169-178
Author(s):  
Gerard Ronge
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Future ◽  
Canonical Texts

The paper explores the philosophical statements emerging from the plot of Jacek Dukaj’s science-fiction novel Perfekcyjna niedoskonałość [The Perfect Imperfection]. The argument of the article states that the Polish novel proposes a complete philosophical model of possible ways of imagining the future which is unique, yet fully coherent with the Enlightenment paradigm. After recapitulating the most important arguments of the mid-century’s discussion about the end of the grand narratives and brief recall of most canonical texts of the period of the Enlightenment, the author analyses ontological presuppositions hidden after the structure of the fictional world created by Dukaj. The novel appears to fully acknowledge the Cartesian dualistic model of the human being (which strongly separates its biological and mental roots) and sets plots in times when all biological limitations have been transgressed. Despite that, both optimistic scenarios of eighteenth-century utopians and catastrophic visions of twentieth-century sci-fi authors have never been fulfilled and the fictional world of the twenty-ninth century appears to be just the same as ours in its core, despite being totally different in terms of its phenomenological appearance.

scholarly journals “The End of Human Exceptionality”: The Shift of the Anthropological Dominant in Science Fiction

2021 ◽  
pp. 163-181
Author(s):  
Dan Paranyuk
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Nature Of Science ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Previous Experience ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
American Science

Based on the methodological proposals of literary anthropology, in particular on the conceptual ideas of C. Levi-Strauss (structural anthropology), J. Ortega y Gasset (“dehumanization of arts”), J.-M. Schaeffer (“the end of human exceptionality”), M. Foucault (the fall of a human being from the humanistic pedestal of culture), the article under studies emphasizes the violation of the anthropological dominant in science fiction, which is very typical of the fantasy genre. Consequently, there arise new principles of constructing personosphere of a literary text. On the example of the novel “City” (1953) by an American science fiction writer Clifford Simak, the article traces the way a human being shifts from the center of personosphere to the “outskirts” of narration, whereas its image acquires fictional parameters. This all happens due to the phenomenon of “anthropocene” (the term by G. Canavan), which implies the harmful consequences of the human reigning over the nature. In addition, the author of the article introduces the notion of “phantasoid’ – a character of the fictional world of fantasy (outlined by the narrator) that functions exceptionally in the imagination of a certain fantastic character and is somehow related to his previous experience. The novel by C. Simak outlines a gradual shift of the anthropological vector: the heterogeneous image of a human turns into a counter-image, whereby particular significance is attached to the change in the attitude towards mankind. In the text, human culture is perceived as something alien, while Simak’s image of a human being ruins the so called imagological stereotype, along with the reader’s receptive expectations. The role of the attractor in the novel is assigned to “antromorphized” and “humanized” creatures (plants, animals, objects, robots, mutants), which indicates the drastic breach with the previous genre tradition, as well as higlights a peculiar polemic connection with classical literary science fiction. This all proves the metamorphic nature of science fiction and its transition into the hyperreal dimensions of fantasy, where different artificial forms of life and mentality can peacefully coexist with each other.

Living machines in our cultural imagination

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Szollosy
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Cultural Imagination ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Future ◽  
Public Imagination ◽  
The Human Condition

Public perceptions of robots and artificial intelligence (AI)—both positive and negative—are hopelessly misinformed, based far too much on science fiction rather than science fact. However, these fictions can be instructive, and reveal to us important anxieties that exist in the public imagination, both towards robots and AI and about the human condition more generally. These anxieties are based on little-understood processes (such as anthropomorphization and projection), but cannot be dismissed merely as inaccuracies in need of correction. Our demonization of robots and AI illustrate two-hundred-year-old fears about the consequences of the Enlightenment and industrialization. Idealistic hopes projected onto robots and AI, in contrast, reveal other anxieties, about our mortality—and the transhumanist desire to transcend the limitations of our physical bodies—and about the future of our species. This chapter reviews these issues and considers some of their broader implications for our future lives with living machines.

Fielding and Richardson

PMLA ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 81 (5) ◽  
pp. 381-388
Author(s):  
William Park
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
General Type ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Tom Jones ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One

But the Discovery [of when to laugh and when to cry] was reserved for this Age, and there are two Authors now living in this Metropolis, who have found out the Art, and both brother Biographers, the one of Tom Jones, and the other of Clarissa.author of Charlotte SummersRather than discuss the differences which separate Fielding and Richardson, I propose to survey the common ground which they share with each other and with other novelists of the 1740's and 50's. In other words I am suggesting that these two masters, their contemporaries, and followers have made use of the same materials and that as a result the English novels of the mid-eighteenth century may be regarded as a distinct historic version of a general type of literature. Most readers, it seems to me, do not make this distinction. They either think that the novel is always the same, or they believe that one particular group of novels, such as those written in the early twentieth century, is the form itself. In my opinion, however, we should think of the novel as we do of the drama. No one kind of drama, such as Elizabethan comedy or Restoration comedy, is the drama itself; instead, each is a particular manifestation of the general type. Each kind bears some relationship to the others, but at the same time each has its own identity, which we usually call its conventions. By conventions I mean not only stock characters, situations, and themes, but also notions and assumptions about the novel, human nature, society, and the cosmos itself. If we compare one kind of novel to another without first considering the conventions of each, we are likely to make the same mistake that Thomas Rymer did when he blamed Shakespeare for not conforming to the canons of classical French drama.

scholarly journals The Catch of the Hyperreal: Yossarian and the Ideological Vicissitudes of Hyperreality

Text Matters ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 386-410
Author(s):  
Abdolali Yazdizadeh
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
American Life ◽  
Ideological Discourse ◽  
Catch 22

Hyperreality is a key term in Jean Baudrillard’s cultural theory, designating a phase in the development of image where it “masks the absence of a profound reality.” The ambiance of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961) closely corresponds to Baudrillard’s notion of the hyperreal as images persist to precede reality in the fictional world of the novel. Since for Baudrillard each order of simulacra produces a certain mode of ideological discourse that impacts the perception of reality, it is plausible that the characters of this fictional context should be ideologically impacted by the hyperreal discourse. From this vantage point it is possible to have a new critical assessment of Yossarian’s (protagonist) antiheroic stance and study the role of the “business of illusion,” whose ideological edifice is based on the discourse of the hyperreal, on his antiheroic stance and actions. By drawing on Baudrillard’s cultural theory this paper aims to read Heller’s novel as a postmodern allegory of rebellion against the hyperreality of the twentieth-century American life and trace its relevance to modern-day U.S.

The Influence of Science Fiction in Healthcare Technology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mª Alexandra Cardoso
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Social Experience ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Healthcare Technology ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The Future ◽  
Spatial Exploration

With technological advances, the human being becomes more and more reliant on technology. We use it to work, to enhance our social experience, to learn, and healthcare, is no exception to this. We are used to hearing concepts originated on Science Fiction coming to life in areas such as spatial exploration or even communication and see how it helps those teams know what consumers were expecting for the future. However, we rarely hear about it influencing the technologies that keep us alive. Has healthcare also benefited from Science Fiction worlds to create new or enhance their technological devices? This literary and cinematic genre pushes the boundaries of what is thought “possible” by idealizing artifacts that go beyond what is conceivable in their time. It is an outlet for those who want to imagine what the future might be like, without forgetting to distinguish possible or plausible from fantasy. In this article, I will go through why it is important to look to Science Fiction as a guide when it comes to conceptualizing new ways of incorporating technology in our healthcare, as well as how it has been done before.

Varen'ka Dobroselova: An Experiment in the Desentimentalization of the Sentimental Heroine in Dostoevskii's Poor Folk

Slavic Review ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-533
Author(s):  
Gary Rosenshield
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Sentimental Novel ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Epistolary Form ◽  
Comic Fiction

Ever since its publication the success of Fedor Dostoevskii's first novel Poor Folk has been ascribed primarily to the characterization of its “naturalistic” hero, Makar Devushkin, not to its sentimental heroine, Varen'ka Dobroselova. Although critics have continued to discover new merits in Poor Folk, in the end it is Devushkin who dominates the novel and on whom, in one way or another, most of its virtues depend. Not only is Devushkin the protagonist, he is also at the center of the novel's important innovations in style, theme, and characterization. Dostoevskii took the poor copying clerk, a type that for a decade had been used as a stock device—and most often the butt—of Russian comic fiction, and transformed him into the hero of a tragi-comic sentimental novel. This transformation was much abetted by Dostoevskii's use of the epistolary form— a form common to the sentimental novel of the eighteenth century, but long outdated in Russia by the 1840s—for it permitted the hero to tell his own story and, by so doing, to reveal the sensitive human being behind the comic mask.

Theology and the Basis of Human Rights

1986 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-378
Author(s):  
John A. Henley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Great Confidence ◽  
Specific Teaching

In the age of the Enlightenment men were inclined, despite their great confidence in human reason, to invoke the deity in support of ‘the rights of man and of the citizen’1 whereas theologians are nowadays somewhat hesitant in suggesting a possible theological basis for human rights.2 Whatever this may indicate about a more aggressive secularism and a more modest theology and church during much of the twentieth century, it will be the contention of this paper that those who drafted eighteenth century statements and declarations of human rights were closer to the truth about their basis. In support of this contention I shall argue, first, that the doubt which some philosophers have expressed about finding a sure foundation for human rights is quite justified and, second, that the purpose for which some theologians have recently offered a theological basis has therefore been unduly limited. Finally, however, and rather ironically, I shall demonstrate that the bases suggested by these theologians are far too grandiose and all embracing and that what is required is the quite specific teaching of eschatology, the theory of Christian hope.

scholarly journals Learning finance through fiction: ‘Cecilia’ and the perils of credit

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-74
Author(s):  
Joyce Goggin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Future ◽  
As If ◽  
Affective Structure

This article discusses the rise of modern banking, the invention of credit and a related persistent orientation to the future inherent in credit-based economies, through the example of the novel which, as a literary form, came into being at roughly the same time. As a distinctly commercial genre and as a product of the financial revolution, novels ask readers to ‘credit’ the stories they tell with truthfulness, and to invest them with a particular form of credibility as significant narratives. At the same time, novels invite readers to imagine ‘as if’ scenarios and possible worlds in much the same way that borrowed capital enables people to construct life worlds based on resources not yet realised through investment in a speculative economy. Therefore, by examining how finance and gambling debts circulate in one particular text from the eighteenth century – Francis Burney’s Cecilia – as a primary example of how credit and fictionalisation grew up together, this article argues that credit and risk feed into the narrative accounting and recounting of the text and articulate the affective structure of the financialised future that we have now inherited, and which informs how we understand ourselves as subjects, as well as how we interact with finance as a form of entertainment.

Closer Still: The Total Artwork

Lyric Cousins ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Sampson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Richard Wagner ◽  
Interior Decoration ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Future ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This chapter considers the Gesamtkunstwerk, which English musicologists translate as ‘total artwork’. Richard Wagner had used the expression to characterise his operas, though he had only ever used the term in two essays, both published in 1849: ‘Art and Revolution’ and ‘The Artwork of the Future’. Moreover, the term did not originate from Wagner himself, and he did not even spell it in the conventional way. Since the late twentieth century ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ has been applied to other artforms, particularly architecture, which like opera can unite a number of elements. (Architecture, for example, marries engineering, landscaping and interior decoration, among others.) But the term's origins are in the late eighteenth-century notion that all the arts could be unified in poetry.

The Way the Future Was, 1930–1951

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael R. Page
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Interest In Science ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Way

This chapter looks at Frederik Pohl's first foray into creating a science fictional world by focusing on his youthful adventures in science fiction (SF) fandom. Pohl discovered SF at age ten in 1930. At that time, SF as a defined category of fiction was only in its fifth year, although the genre itself had a much longer pedigree. Hugo Gernsback launched the first SF magazine, Amazing Stories, in April 1926. The first SF magazine Pohl read was the Summer 1930 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly. This chapter discusses Pohl's discovery of a collection of pulp magazines in 1931 at his uncle's farm in Pennsylvania; his interest in science fiction magazines; his initial attempts at writing his own stories; and his involvement with the group called Futurians. The chapter also describes Pohl's involvement in the literary agency business.

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