scholarly journals From Bion to Delany

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-27
Author(s):  
Riccardo Gramantieri
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Wilfred Bion ◽  
Data History ◽  
Literary Model ◽  
Realistic Data ◽  
Alpha Function

Literature furnishes a particular vertex to see reality through narrative fiction. In particular, science fiction literature, which creates a fantastic situation starting from realistic data (history, science, cultures), may be considered a kind of creative process. It uses heterogeneous things and “integrates” them into a homogeneous, new and comprehensible product. Science fiction writing allows the objects of the real to be reprocessed in terms which are thinkable at the current moment. Using the terminology established in psychoanalysis by Wilfred Bion this reprocessing work is a transformation. According to Bion we can hypothesise that the writer of the science fiction literary work serves as a “container” and the science fiction novel, considered a different way to represent reality and not just a simple editorial product, serves as a alpha-function to make concepts that were not previously thinkable or understandable. Between the 70s and the 80s the writer Samuel Delany theorized and put into practice the use of a literary model called “modular calculus”. This model allows the literary work of making something unthinkable into thinkable. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how modular calculus is a particular type of Bionian transformation, and how the science fiction novel can play the role of alpha-function, transforming unthinkable concepts into thinkable ones.

scholarly journals BENTUK AMAE DAN OMOIYARI DALAM CERPEN FUMINSHO

KIRYOKU ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Yuliani Rahmah
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literature Research ◽  
The Relationship

(Amae and Omoiyari’s form in Fuminsho's Short story) This article describes the embodiment of bushido values in a literary work. The value discussed is one of the Bushido element called Jin (means compassion) especially the form of amae and omoiyari. With literature research method,this article explain amae and omoiyari’s attitude which describes in a Japanese short story entitled Fuminsho. As a result it is known that despite the genre of science fiction, the short story of fuminsho contains amae and omoiyari which is shown by the relationship between the role of main characters and the other characters in the short story.Keywords : Short-story; Amae ; Omoiyari

Speculative Realism and Science Fiction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Willems
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Cormac Mccarthy ◽  
Doris Lessing ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
Neil Gaiman ◽  
The World ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Quentin Meillassoux

A human-centred approach to the environment is leading to ecological collapse. One of the ways that speculative realism challenges anthropomorphism is by taking non-human things to be as valid objects of investivation as humans, allowing a more responsible and truthful view of the world to take place. Brian Willems uses a range of science fiction literature that questions anthropomorphism both to develop and challenge this philosophical position. He looks at how nonsense and sense exist together in science fiction, the way in which language is not a guarantee of personhood, the role of vision in relation to identity formation, the difference between metamorphosis and modulation, representations of non-human deaths and the function of plasticity within the Anthropocene. Willems considers the works of Cormac McCarthy, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Doris Lessing and Kim Stanley Robinson are considered alongside some of the main figures of speculative materialism including Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux and Jane Bennett.

THE ROLE OF ANTHROPONYMS IN THE SEMANTIC FIELD OF ARTISTIC WORKS

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (29) ◽  
pp. 66-77
Author(s):  
Lidiya Derbenyova
Keyword(s):  
Literary Work ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Semantic Field ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Minor Part ◽  
The One ◽  
A Minor ◽  
And Storage ◽  
Horizon Of Expectations

The article explores the role of antropoetonyms in the reader’s “horizon of expectation” formation. As a kind of “text in the text”, antropoetonyms are concentrating a large amount of information on a minor part of the text, reflecting the main theme of the work. As a “text” this class of poetonyms performs a number of functions: transmission and storage of information, generation of new meanings, the function of “cultural memory”, which explains the readers’ “horizon of expectations”. In analyzing the context of the literary work we should consider the function of antropoetonyms in vertical context (the link between artistic and other texts, and the groundwork system of culture), as well as in the context of the horizontal one (times’ connection realized in the communication chain from the word to the text; the author’s intention). In this aspect, the role of antropoetonyms in the structure of the literary text is extremely significant because antropoetonyms convey an associative nature, generating a complex mechanism of allusions. It’s an open fact that they always transmit information about the preceding text and suggest a double decoding. On the one hand, the recipient decodes this information, on the other – accepts this as a sort of hidden, “secret” sense.

scholarly journals The Absolute as the Meeting Point Between Speculation and Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 349-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daina Habdankaitė
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Meeting Point ◽  
Weird Fiction ◽  
Weak Points ◽  
The Absolute

AbstractThe article investigates Meillassoux’s notion of the absolute in relationship with the Kantian and Hegelian philosophical systems. The absolute, as independent of subjective consciousness, is showcased as the meeting point of speculation and fiction. By looking into Meillassoux’s notions of speculation and some works of weird fiction, it is argued that the significant role of imagination as well as a deferred temporality is what facilitates the discussion of both speculation and fiction as faculties able to transcend the limitations that are projected by the correlationist mind. Through a reading of Lovecraftian fiction, both the strong and weak points of Meillassoux’s argumentation in After Finitude and Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction are identified, proving the latter to be a less successful way of grasping the chaotic real.

scholarly journals Cervantes, the Journey, and What it Tells Us About Becoming a Writer

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 391-394
Author(s):  
Lania Knight
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Henry James ◽  
Confirmation Bias ◽  
Helene Cixous ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Fiction Writers

Abstract The article traces the notion of empathy in fiction writing and how Cervantes’s treatment of characters in Don Quixote initiated a tradition which is ongoing in literature even today. The path of the writer is examined as a means for understanding how a writer must develop empathy for others, beginning with quotes from writers Helene Cixous and Henry James. Next, within the current political context of global upheaval and shift following on from the election of Donald Trump as president of the U.S.A. as well as the vote for Brexit in the U.K., the article argues for the relevance of Cervantes’s novel, not as a dated work of fiction, but as a text relevant both in form and in content for the modern political climate. Finally, the connection is made between fiction writers’ ability to feel empathy for others and create characters which readers will feel empathy for. The article follows on to proclaim the revolutionary and timely role of the fiction writer to help save us from ourselves in a tumultuous political landscape made unpredictable by social media-generated confirmation bias and insularity.

scholarly journals The Invariant Set Postulate: a new geometric framework for the foundations of quantum theory and the role played by gravity

2009 ◽  
Vol 465 (2110) ◽  
pp. 3165-3185 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. N. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
State Space ◽  
Fractal Geometry ◽  
Quantum Physics ◽  
Nonlinear Dynamical Systems ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
Invariant Set ◽  
Geometric Framework

A new law of physics is proposed, defined on the cosmological scale but with significant implications for the microscale. Motivated by nonlinear dynamical systems theory and black-hole thermodynamics, the Invariant Set Postulate proposes that cosmological states of physical reality belong to a non-computable fractal state-space geometry I , invariant under the action of some subordinate deterministic causal dynamics D I . An exploratory analysis is made of a possible causal realistic framework for quantum physics based on key properties of I . For example, sparseness is used to relate generic counterfactual states to points p ∉ I of unreality, thus providing a geometric basis for the essential contextuality of quantum physics and the role of the abstract Hilbert Space in quantum theory. Also, self-similarity, described in a symbolic setting, provides a possible realistic perspective on the essential role of complex numbers and quaternions in quantum theory. A new interpretation is given to the standard ‘mysteries’ of quantum theory: superposition, measurement, non-locality, emergence of classicality and so on. It is proposed that heterogeneities in the fractal geometry of I are manifestations of the phenomenon of gravity. Since quantum theory is inherently blind to the existence of such state-space geometries, the analysis here suggests that attempts to formulate unified theories of physics within a conventional quantum-theoretic framework are misguided, and that a successful quantum theory of gravity should unify the causal non-Euclidean geometry of space–time with the atemporal fractal geometry of state space. The task is not to make sense of the quantum axioms by heaping more structure, more definitions, more science fiction imagery on top of them, but to throw them away wholesale and start afresh. We should be relentless in asking ourselves: From what deep physical principles might we derive this exquisite structure? These principles should be crisp, they should be compelling. They should stir the soul. Chris Fuchs ( Gilder 2008 , p. 335)

scholarly journals SANITATION AND TELEPATHY: GEORGE ELIOT'S THE LIFTED VEIL

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-76
Author(s):  
Derek Woods
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
First Person ◽  
Sense Of Smell ◽  
Extrasensory Perception ◽  
Sanitary Reform ◽  
Foul Odor ◽  
One Year

The Great Stink of London took place one year before the publication of George Eliot's The Lifted Veil (1859). As a peak sanitary crisis, the Great Stink helps us to understand the particular telepathy of Eliot's narrator, since The Lifted Veil combines the rhetoric of telepathy with that of a more threatening form of transmission among bodies: foul odor and contagious air. Throughout the figurative structure of Eliot's story, tropes that convey the narrator's ostensibly supernatural experience contain traces – sometimes cryptic, sometimes explicit – of the earthly matter of sanitary crisis. The first section of this essay explores the sanitary dimension of The Lifted Veil, linking the story to sanitary crisis and to Victorian materialist psychology – particularly the work of George Henry Lewes – which conceived mind in physical terms. With the role of sanitation established, the second section shows the importance of the sense of smell to Latimer's first-person narration of telepathy. This section outlines the transition, contemporaneous with sanitary reform, from the use of animal to the use of vegetable perfumes. Throughout the story, vegetable scents act as prophylaxes against the narrator's too-physical telepathy. From these readings, it becomes clear that Eliot writes “extrasensory” perception with recourse to sensory figures. Telepathy and sanitation overlap in this exceptional gothic science fiction in such a way as to demand a new concept of olfactory telepathy.

scholarly journals Between Sensorimotor Data and Conceptual Message: Embodied Simulation as an Approach to the Reading of Two Science Fiction Plays, Jennifer Haley’s The Nether and Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s Boom

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 85
Author(s):  
Khaled Mostafa Karam
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Input Data ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Mental Process ◽  
Embodied Simulation ◽  
Thematic Content ◽  
Linguistic Input ◽  
Stimulation Of

This paper explains how the activation of the reader’s cognitive capacity of embodied simulation can improve the perception of science fiction and its interest in exploring the materiality of bodies. It offers an embodied cognitive interpretation of Haley’s The Nether and Nachtrieeb’s Boom, stressing the role of close reading of sensorimotor data in triggering the mental process of simulation and reinforcing the reader’s embodied involvement within the text. This paper also illustrates the cognitive link between linguistic input data in the process of reading science fiction and the stimulation of the capacity of embodied simulation. It argues that the more intensive the sensorimotor data is, the more appealing to the capacity of embodied simulation the text proves to be. The paper attempts to prove that the close reading of science fiction drama, abundant in sensorimotor data, is capable of generating an embodied simulative experience which guarantees a deeper understanding of the thematic content and an empathic engagement with the characters.

scholarly journals Sentence Fragments in the Narration of the Novel "The Hunger Games"

Lexicon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Farhani Nurhusna
Keyword(s):  
Young Adult ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Hunger Games ◽  
Essential Components ◽  
The Hunger Games ◽  
Dependent Clause

The use of sentence fragments is generally discouraged in good English writing because they lack one or more essential components of a sentence, namely a subject and/or a predicate, and thus are grammatically unacceptable. However in fiction writing, the use of sentence fragments is not only quite common in dialogue, but in narration as well. The present study analyses sentence fragments in the narration of the first novel of the young-adult science-fiction trilogy The Hunger Games written by Suzanne Collins, to investigate the types of fragments employed in the novel and their classification based on syntactic structure in the form of dependent-clause fragments and phrase fragments. The sentence fragments were further analysed for their use based on the context of their preceding sentences. The use of sentence fragments in the novel basically serves the function of creating emphasis or stressing important points in the story.

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