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Deconstructing the Time Machine (La déconstruction de la machine du temps) Author(s): Veronica Hollinger Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 14, No. 2, Critical Approaches to Science Fiction: Retrospects & Prospects (Jul., 1987), pp. 201-221 Published by: SF-TH Inc Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4239816 . Accessed: 28/08/2014 12:20
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This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:20:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions DECONSTRUCTINGTHE TIMEMACHINE 201
Veronica Hollinger
Deconstructingthe Time Machine'
Time is, of all modesof existence,most obsequious to the imagination.... SamuelJohnson
The idea of time travelhas for manyyears exercised the ingenuitynot only of SF writers,but of scientistsand philosophers as well; neitherthe equationsof quantumphysics nor the rulesof logic have manageddefinitively to proveor to disprove the possibilitythat this most paradoxicalof SF concepts may some day be realized.'The purposeof this presentessay is to examinesome aspects of time travel within the frameworkof Derrideandeconstruction, since, as I hope to demonstrate,the time-travelstory always achieves a deconstructionof certain received ideas about the natureand structureof time. It may be thatdeconstructive activity of some kind is characteristicof all SF, in which case this present applicationof post-structuralistcritical theory may serve to suggest new approachesto other SF motifs. The final two sections of this essay focus in detail upon H.G. Wells's The Time Machine(1895), the novellawhich first appliedtechnology to time traveland which remains the most influential time-travel story ever written. Anticipatingpost-structuralist strategies by a good many years, The Time Machineaccomplishes its own ironic deconstructionof Victorianscientific positivism,couched in the very languageof the system which it sets out to undermine.And this, as I will discuss below, is the very essence of the deconstructiveenterprise.
1. Time travel is a sign without a referent, a linguistic construction originatingin the metaphoricalspatialization of temporality.As MarkRose observes, "the visualizationof time as a line generatedthe idea of time travel"(p. 108). To write abouttime travel,therefore, is necessarilyto have performeda kind of reading,to have interpretedtime in orderto structureit as the "space"through which a travellercan undertakea journey. As lin- guistic construction,time travel is never "true,"but its very status as pure sign gives rise to one of its most valuablefunctions within the SF genre:the time-travelstory provides literary metaphors of our ideasabout the natureof time; it is a means of working out the logical (and the not-so-logical) implicationsof our interpretationsof this most nebulousaspect of human experience. As in all SF, the relationshipin time-travelstories between narrative event and empirical reality can be characterizedas either analogical or extrapolative.The analogicaltendency is exhibited,for example, in James
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Tiptree,Jr's "Houston, Houston, Do YouRead?" (1976), in whichtime travel is used both to literalize Tiptree'scritique of contemporarysexual chau- vinism and to demystify the signifying coercivenessof concepts such as "feminine"and "masculine."Her fictionalfuture is relativelydiscontinuous with contemporaryreality. At the other end of the spectrum,a novel like Gregory Benford's Timescape (1980) emphasizes the interrelationships amongpresent, past, and futurein very direct ways, concernedas it is with the short-termeffects of recentecological carelessness.No matterwhat the reigningtendency of a particularstory, however,time travelis itself always metaphorical,the result of a "false"condensation of time with space.3The Time Machine, for example, offers itself as a propheticwarning of the declineof the humanrace andthis "devolution"is the apparentlydirect result of the class divisiveness of Wells's contemporary social situation. Nevertheless,the "scientific"rationale for the temporaljourney which makes possible this warningis developed solely throughspatial metaphors.The Time Traveller'scentral contentionis that "thereis no differencebetween Time and any of the threedimensions of Spaceexcept that our consciousness movesalong it"(TTM 1:5). It is indicativeof the changesthat have occurred in scientificand philo- sophical "discursiveformations" (to borrowa term from Michel Foucault) thatSF no longerdefines itself solely as an extrapolativegenre. This is due in large part to the comprehensiverealization that reality is constitutedby language;that the languagefrom withinwhich we speakconstantly mediates betweenthe self and experiehceof reality.Ferdinand de Saussure'sinsight into the arbitrarynature of the bond betweensign and referent,his conclu- sion that"every means of expressionused in society is based,in principle,on collective behaviouror-what amountsto the same thing-on convention" (p. 68), indicatesboth the contingencyand indeterminacyof these linguistic mediations.We are led to the unavoidableconclusion that experience of realityis alwaysalready interpretation, since "withoutlanguage, thought is a vague, unchartednebula [a happilyfortuitous SF metaphor].There are no pre-existingideas, andnothing is distinctbefore the appearanceof language" (Saussure:112). Like other literary metaphors,a time-travelstory is a metaphoronce removed,a metaphorof a metaphorwhich may or may not have any direct relationshipwith objective reality, since that reality is screenedfrom direct apprehensionby the very languagethrough which we speak of it. Languagespeaks of time in spatialmetaphors and producesthe conceptof travelin time.4 Rose suggests that the metaphoricaltendency in contemporarySF far outweighsits predictiveintent. In his initialdistinction between fantasy and SF, he discussesanalogy and extrapolation in the followingterms:
it maybe useful...toconceive the opposition between fantasy and science fic- tion in terms of RomanJakobson's distinction between metaphor and metonymyas poles of literarybehavior. The changedworlds of fantasyare presentedas literarysubstitutions for reality;they are relatedto the empir- ical worldparadigmatically or metaphorically....Thechanged worlds of sci- ence fiction,however, are presented as logicalextensions of reality;they are
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relatedto the empiricalworld syntagmaticallyor metonymically.This is whatis meantwhen sciencefiction is calledan extrapolativeform. (Rose: 2l-22)- Recognizingthat "bothprinciples are at workin science fiction as in all dis- course"(p. 22), Rose neverthelessnotes a shift in emphasisfrom metonymy to metaphor in more recent SF, which has resulted in "a radical reinterpretationof the genre"(p. 16). We may concludefrom this that time travel is not the anomaly it might at first appearto be, since its overtly metaphoricalfunction is now the rule of the genre, ratherthan the exception. DarkoSuvin (pp. 222-42) has suggestedThe TimeMachine as a "structural model"for SF; in the presentcontext, it offers itself as a linguisticparadigm as well.7 Suvinhas definedSF as a genre "whosemain formal device is an imagi- native frameworkalternative to the author'sempirical environment" (p. 8). Fromthis perspective,time travelis "a meansof realitydisplacement" (p. 71) similar to space travel, in that it functionsto introducethe readerinto the alternativeframework of the SF text as an "extensionand exaggerationof some facet of our experience into [sic] another setting" (Lindsay: 126). Extendingbeyond such generic displacement,however, time travel also achievesa displacementspecific to itself, and this is its subversionof certain traditionalapproaches to the questionof time. This holds true whetherthe stories in which it appearsoffer themselvesto the readeras metaphorical commentaries,as exercisesin extrapolation,or as blendsof both. It will be useful at this point (for criticaltheory can be as much a force for defamiliarizationas SF itself)8to continuethis discussionof the partic- ularnature and functionof time travelfrom withinthe contextof Derridean deconstruction.Jacques Derrida's (anti)philosophical strategies are so named becausethey recognizethe impossibilityof effectingany completeor perma- nentbreakdown of the conventionalizedmodes of thoughtfrom withinwhich we interprethuman reality. Derrida cautions that it is not a questionof 'rejecting'these notions; they are necessary,and, at leastat present,nothing is conceivablefor us withoutthem. It is a questionat firstof demonstratingthe systematicand historical solidarity of theconcepts and gesturesof thoughtthat one oftenbelieves to be innocentlyseparated. (OG,pp. 13-14) Both SF and post-structuralisttheory in general are involved in the processes of defamiliarization:SF achieves a "cognitiveestrangement"9 through its displacement of the social/political/culturalpresent, while deconstructionseeks to expose the conventionalnature of the "gesturesof thought"of the Westernmetaphysical tradition. Thus both call attentionto the historicalcontingency of their subjectmatter. "I On the other hand, both SF and deconstructionmust speakfrom withinthe contextswhich they seek to defamiliarize:there is no getting outside of the discoursesof consensus reality.Derrida is at his most succincthere: "il n'y a pas de hors-texte"(OG, p. 158). There is no vantagepoint outsidethe boundariesof the observable, no privilegedobserver, no completelyinnocent reading of "reality."
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2. Time travel is always potentially deconstructive,effecting as it does a displacementof the human"here and now"upon which we tend to base our interpretationsof reality. Its immediate fascination for writers, as for scientists and logicians, is the fact that time-travel stories are always constructedaround and within paradox,"the contradictionthat at each dif- ferent momentwe occupy a differentmoment from the one which we are then occupying-that five minutes from now, for example, [we] may be a hundredyears from now" (Williams: 105). The time travellerexperiences diachrony (succession) as synchrony(simultaneity), but the effect is not simply a reversalof these two perspectives,because the time-travelstory does not abandonthe notionof historicalchange, which tends to resultwhen synchronyis privilegedover diachrony.The result is rathera paradoxical movementin which the narrativesynchronicity of temporalevents highlights ratherthan hides differencesin times. The instantaneousdisplacement of the time travellerfrom one momentto anothercreates an immediatejuxtaposi- tion of differences which our habitualsense of the successivityof events rendersless discontinuousand jarring than it in fact is. At the heart of the time-travelmotif is the "scandal"of temporalpar- adox. The GrandfatherParadox is the best-knownversion of this peril of backwardtime travel.Larry Niven develops it as follows: At the age of eightyyour grandfather invents a time machine.You hate the old man,so you stealthe machineand take it sixtyyears back into the past andkill him.How can they suspect you? But you'vekilled him beforehe can meet yourgrandmother. Thus you werenever born. He didn't get a chanceto buildthe time machine either. Butthen you can't have killed him. Thus he maystill sireyour father, who maysire you. Later there will be a timemachine... Youand the machineboth do anddo notexist. (Niven: 11 1)" As Niven concludes, "with the GrandfatherParadox operating, the effect, coming before the cause, may cause the cause never to come into effect, with resultsthat are not even self-consistent"(p. 113).This variation of the time-travelstory leads the reader to "the point at which thought encountersan aporia-or self-engenderedparadox beyond which it cannot press"(Norris: 49). The structureof the time-loopstory creates another version of temporal paradox.Readers who try to unravelthe threadsof RobertA. Heinlein's"All YouZombies-" (1959) will find themselvesensnared in the same time-loop whichtraps its protagonist:through time traveland sex change,he is his own motherand father;trapped in a processof endless supplementation,he must repeatedlytravel into the pastto (re)createhimself. Heinlein's brilliantexercise in solipsism is a virtual dramatizationof Derrida's (non)concept of the supplement, which he develops in his deconstructionof the nature/cultureopposition. As Derridademonstrates, the concept of the supplementcontains two differing significations.At its most obvious, it is a surplus,an additionto full presence:"it cumulatesand accumulatespresence" (OG, p. 144).Thus, for example,culture supplements nature,and writingsupplements speech. Traditionally, nature and speechare
This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:20:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions DECONSTRUCTINGTHE TIME MACHINE 205 privilegedover cultureand writing,which are consideredto be supplemen- tary constructs.In addition,however (as its own "supplementary"implica- tion), the supplementcompensates for a lack of full presenceand comes to replace that which it supplements:"it intervenesor insinuatesitself in-the- place-of " (OG, p. 145: emphasis in original).'3 In demonstratingthe impossibilityof arrivingat the originof the "entity" (his protagonistJane), Heinlein dramatizes the alwaysalready supplemented natureof thatentity. At whichpoint did Janeenjoy a pureun(re)created state if s/he is caught in the deterministicstrands of an endless time-loop?"All You Zombies-" is the fictional analogueof the Derrideancontention that "theapparent addition/substitution of the supplementactually constitutes the seemingly unsupplementedentity" (Leitch: 172; emphasis in original). Heinlein'sJane is alwaysalready supplemented by his/hertrips into the past to repeatthe act of (re)creation:"the indifferent process of supplementarity has alwaysalready infiltrated presence" (OG, p. 163;emphasis in original).14 Heinlein'sstory is arguablythe masterpieceof its type, but the disturbing play of supplementarityis inherentin any time-loopsituation, from Robert Silverberg'shard-bitten "Absolutely Inflexible" (1956) to the parodic"Sev- enthVoyage" of StanislawLem's Star Diaries (1964).
3. As I suggested earlier, to write about time travel is alwaysalready to have performed a reading; that is, it requires that the writer has first interpretedtime in orderto structureit as space. Since scientificdiscourse is one of the frameworkswithin which all SF is written,the revolutionwhich overturnedthe Newtonianscientific paradigmhas necessarilyhad an effect upon how time-travelstories read time. This scientific revolutionaccounts for a majorshift in the developmentof the motif, since interpretationof time is a crucial differentiumbetween the Newtonianand Einsteinianworld- views.'5 As JamesZiegler explains: To Newtontime was a constant,to be measuredin the sameway that mass, density,and volumeare measured.To Einsteintime is relativein the same way thatmass, density,and volumeare relative.Since mass, density,and volumechange as theirvelocities change, time also changes-hence the pop- ular termfourth dimension.(p. 74) If the readingof time takesplace withinthe paradigmof ClassicalPhysics, temporalstructure will tend to be linear,homogeneous, and consecutive;on the other hand, relative time is nothing if not a "post-structure,"tending towardsheterogeneity and indeterminacy.Or, to invokean analogousset of metaphorsdeveloped by RolandBarthes, Newtonian time is read as Work (asuvre), Einsteiniantime as Text(texte). 16 Before exploring this analogy, however,it is necessary to review the implicationsof the severalsets of binaryoppositions that have appearedin my own text. I have already made use of Rose's Jakobsoniandistinction between metonymyand metaphor,and two more polaritieshave just been introduced:the oppositionbetween the Newtonianand Einsteinianscientific paradigmsand Barthes'opposition of the Workto the Text. While each of these is a functionalopposition in this present analysis, it should not be
This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:20:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 206 SCIENCE-FICTIONSTUDIES, VOLUME 14(1987) supposedthat they are in anyfundamental sense truly antithetical.Indeed, the configurationof binaryoppositions, as the principalstructural convention of our mentaloperations, is the primetarget of Derrideandeconstruction. 17 Derrida'sdeconstruction of the "proper"discourse of philosophy (in his essay "White Mythology: Metaphorin the Text of Philosophy"),as it demonstratesthe metaphoricalnature of all language,leads inevitablyto the conclusionthat, so far from standingin oppositionto metaphor,metonymy may in fact be defined as a special case of metaphor.Nor does Relativity Theory considerNewtonian science in oppositionto itself: "Relativitydoes not...contradictclassical physics. It simply regards the old concepts as limiting cases that apply solely to the familiar experiences of [human beings]"(Barnett: 58). Hence, if my contentionthat time may be readas eitherWork or Textis to hold up, it is necessaryto "supplement"Barthes' argument, to recognize that all literaryproductions are texts (or intertexts,for that matter-a more radically heterogeneous view of literary discourse). The Work, best exemplifiedin the world-viewof the 19th-centuryrealist novel, is a limiting case of Text, one more consonantwith "thefamiliar experiences" of human reality, which we tend to interpretin linear, causal patterns, as logical structures.It is diffcerancewhich defines and which "invitesus to undo the need for balancedequations, to see if each term in an oppositionis not after all an accompliceof the other"(Spivak: lix). In place of presence,of center, of secureground upon which to base our knowledgeof reality,Derrida offers the "play" of differance as the (non)principleof reality. Difftrance, a Derrideanneologism which conflatesthe effects of bothdeferral and differ- ence, is the gap betweensignifier and signified, betweensign and referent, betweenour interpretationsof the worldand the world"in itself."'8 Barthesmakes the distinctionbetween Work and Textin "FromWork to Text,"a productof his later, post-structuralist,career. Recognizingthat the idea of the Work arises from within the same epistemologicalmatrix (or episteme)as does ClassicalPhysics, he writes of it as "a traditionalnotion that has long been and still is thoughtof in whatmight be called Newtonian fashion"(p. 74). The implicationhere, of course, is that the Text is to be aligned with Einsteinian"fashion." Derrida has also recognizedthe post- structuralistaffinities of relativisticscience. In his seminal essay "Play, Structureand Sign in the Discourseof the HumanSciences," he observesthat "theEinsteinian constant is not a constant,is not a center.It is the very con- cept of variability-it is, finally,the conceptof the game"(p. 267). Relativity becomes identifiedwith free play and differance,the (non)principlesof the "post-structure." Time-travelstories influencedby Newtonianfashions rely heavilyupon an interpretationof time-as-Work,which limits the free playof bothnarrative eventand structure:the Newtonianuniverse is "a closed systemoperating by fixed rules that [can] be discovered by reason based on observation" (Ziegler:70). Newton'sidealist physics defined time as absolute:in Book One of his PrincipiaMathematica (1687), he writes that"absolute, true and mathematicaltime, of itself and from its own nature,flows equablywithout relation to anythingexternal" (quoted in Thayer, p. 17). Absolute Time
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(functioninglike a kind of metaphysicalGreenwich Mean Time) joins the companyof transcendentalsignifieds, the centerswhich determinethe fixed nature of metaphysicalstructures. By the 19th century, the concept of AbsoluteTime had given way to a belief in NaturalLaw as the organizing principlewhich secured and determined the natureand structure of time. In many ways, The TimeMachine appears to be an exemplarydemon- strationof time as NewtonianWork. Wells's Traveller journeys through one dimensionof a rationaluniverse which is itself a fixed structure,a totality whose "truth"is, at least potentially,accessible to scientificdiscovery. The Victorianscientist is presentedas an intelligentand competent reader of time future,the quintessentialprivileged observer, the subjectwho enjoys a van- tage point hundredsof thousandsof years removedfrom the object of his study.9 Because time is a linear and homogeneousWork, the Time Traveller moves along a fixed time-lineinto a futurewhich is the directand apparently inevitableresult of his present(time readas classic realistnovel). His ability to returnto this present (as opposed to any other "present")is never in question.As he gazed at the starsof the far future(he tells his listeners),he "thoughtof theirunfathomable distance, and the slow inevitabledrift of their movementsfrom the unknownpast into the unknownfuture" (1.79). This "inevitabledrift" of the starsis both a fact of Wells'snarrative universe and a resolutelyspatial metaphor for the fixed structureof time. Inevitabilityis a keynoteof time-as-Work.The "devolution"which Wells saw threateningthe society of his own day is figuredfirst in bio-sociological decline and thenrepeated in the entropicdecay of the SolarSystem (scientif- ically determinedaccording to the Second Law of Thermodynamics).20At the level of narrativeevent, the logic of Wells'sreading seems to requirethe final disappearanceof the Travellerhimself from the text.2' The most powerfulevent in TheTime Machine is a dramaticallyvisual depiction of this vast determination:the Travellerat the terminal beach, a helpless and horrifiedspectator at the end of the world.Wells's epilogue seems to suggest thattime futureis as fixed as time past:"If thatis so, it remainsfor us to live as thoughit were not so" (12:117).Nothing to be done. Interpretedwithin the frameworkof the Newtonianworld-view, the Narrator'srather enigmatic conclusioninvites this fatalisticreading. Whentime is readas Work,SF tendsto functionmetonymically-that is, as extrapolation-since temporalstructure is comprisedof a rationaland successive series of cause-and-effectevents. Temporalfree play is usually limited to forwardmovement in time; the "scandal"of temporalparadox is quitefirmly excluded from the game. This may be the reasonthat most early time-travelstories limit themselvesto trips into the future.Examples would include the optimisticanticipation of EdwardBellamy's best-selling utopia, LookingBackward, 2000-1887 (1888), and the "death-watch"anxieties of JohnW. Campbell'stwin stories"Twilight" (1934) and "Night" (1935), which together offer Campbell'sown version of the triumphof entropy. These futurejourneys provide some protectionagainst the dangers (to narrative event and/orto the discourse of the text) of temporalparadox. One of the earliest stories to admitthe potentialfor temporalparadox, Mark Twain's A
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Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), dissolves finally into a metaphysical negation of reality, conveniently erasing temporal structure altogether. In place of the majestic drift of the stars in The Time Machine, Hank Morgan in A Connecticut Yankeerefers to his life as "this pathetic drift between the eternities" (18:161). 4. When the Einsteinian scientific paradigm displaces the Newtonian,SF is invited to explore what we might call the infinite free play of temporal structure, the play of time-as-Text, heterogeneous, indeterminate, and uncentered, completely at odds with the notion of fixed structure. Considered in this context, Derrida's explication of the concept of centered structure implicates Classical Physics in the game of Western metaphysics: The concept of centered structureis in fact the concept of a freeplay based on a fundamentalground, a freeplay which is constituted upon a funda- mental immobility and a reassuring certitude, which is itself beyond the reach of the freeplay. With this certitude anxiety can be mastered, for anx- iety is invariably the result of a certain mode of being implicated in the game, of being caughtby the game, of being as it were from the very begin- ning at stake in the game. ("Play, Sign and Structure,"p. 248) Derrida's (anti)philosophy is clearly a product of the same episteme which produced the Principle of Indeterminacy. This holds, in part, that "the very act of observing alters the object being observed" (Heisenberg: 24). The sci- entist as well as the philosopher is implicated in the game. We may also see in the Principle of Complementarity, by which contemporary physics recognizes both the wave and particle properties of light, a recognition of the fundamental differance in the nature of reality. Relativity offers a new (non)definition of both space and time: space and time are forms of intuition,which can be no more divorced from consciousness than can our concepts of color, shape, or size. Space has no objective reality except as an order or arrangementof the objects we perceive in it, and time has no independenceapart from the order of events by which we perceive it. (Barnett: 19) Scientific discourse admits its own status as metaphor. Time has no reality outside of our interpretations and it invites a potentially vast variety of possible "readings." Time is read as Work in a reality defined by discourse that upholds the traditional hierarchical opposition between science and fic- tion, in which science is the privileged term. In post-structuralist epistemology, of which Relativity Theory is one expression, this opposition has been subverted. Science, no longer privileged, has become subsumed under fiction as a particular system of discourse, and this has greatly expanded the possibilities for SF's explorations of the nature and structure of time. Jorge Luis Borges has left us one of the most memorable figurations of this new awareness of time in his story "The Garden of Forking Paths" (1944), which concerns a book which is also a labyrinth, a remarkable image of time-as-Text. Borges writes that the author of this book
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did not think of time as absolute and uniform. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a dizzily growing, ever spreadingnetwork of diverging, convergingparallel times. This web of time-the strandsof which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries-embraces every possibility. (p. 156)23 Borges's radical postmodern philosophy is echoed in less extreme form in many SF stories which function within the Einsteinian paradigm. The fixed time-line of The Time Machine loses its privileged status in the face of the heterogeneity of times of the relative universe. Such offshoots of the time- travel story as alternate and parallel world stories, which frequently include the ideas of multiple time-tracks and branching time-lines, are extensions of this reading of time-as-Text. James Blish's Jack of Eagles (1952), for example, is an early novel which suggests the possibility of a split in the time-line. Larry Niven explores some of the darker implications of a universe of universes created by endlessly branching time-lines in his story "All the Myriad Ways" (1968). Alternate times and multiple time-tracks shape stories such as Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle (1962), in which Germany and Japan have won World War II. Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream (1972), which is "really" Adolph Hitler's 1953 award-winning novel, The Lord of the Swastika, also fits into this category. In many of these sto- ries, scientific relativity finds its analogue in a serious exploration of cultural relativity. Time-as-Text invites us not only to read it, but to participate in writing it as well, to admit our active role in the creation of the structure, our com- plicity in the game: "the Text requires an attempt to abolish (or at least to lessen) the distance between writing and reading, not by intensifying the reader's projection into the Work, but by linking the two together in a single unifying process" (Barthes: 79). Because Wells's Time Traveller reads the future as logical and determined extrapolation of his present, he confirms the inevitability of devolution and apocalypse, a confirmation which severely limits the freedom of the human subject to shape events in time. Relativity has contributed to the restoration of this freedom in many SF stories. Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), for example, posits at least two opposing futures which are potential in the present, and one of these, a feminist utopia, uses time travel in an effort (whose outcome is left open) to ensure its actualization. Benford's Timescape (1980) assumes an even greater freedom to write time: the doomed world of 1998 successfully uses time travel to warn the world of 1962 of its impending ruin; the result is a split in the time-line, as the world of 1962 veers towards its new future, while the "old" future continues to decline. Writing time in this instance includes (re)writing the past. Even when a time-travel story inscribes itself within the Newtonian paradigm (as many still continue to do), it is (at least, from a "postmodern" perspective) always already deconstructive of any mechanical reading of the universe. The Time Machine can once again provide the model for this partic- ular textual activity. We have already seen, for example, some of the effects of Wells's reading of time-as-Work:the determinate nature of time, the line-
This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:20:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 210 SCIENCE-FICTIONSTUDIES, VOLUME 14 (1987) arityof temporalstructure, and the apparentlyextrapolative tendency which developsfrom this view of time. Butby the very fact thatthis is a time-travel story,narrative activity disruptive of specificaspects of the 19th-centurypos- itivist world-viewis alreadyat play withinthe text. In the first place, in orderto postulatetime travelas one of the givens of his narrativeuniverse, Wells had to separatethe subjectivetime of his Travellerfrom the objectivetime by whichhis temporalperceptions are sup- posedlydetermined. Private time breaksfree of publictime. This situationis analogousto Derrida'ssubversion of the languelparole(language as system! languageas individualspeech-act) hierarchy erected by Saussureanstruc- tural linguistics.This deconstructionof the oppositionbetween public and private time also anticipatesRelativity Theory, which, in Stephen Kern's delightfulimage, has "filledthe universewith clocks each telling a different correct time" (p. 19). Kern identifiesthe collusion betweenthe normative and the coercive, between "the authorityof uniform public time" and "centralizedpublic authority" (p. 16)which is implicitin the idea of a public time. Now thereis no moreprivileged Time, only an infinitenumber of indi- vidual times which togetherconstitute the illusion of an absoluteand uni- versal Time. As a consequenceof this subversionof publictime, the conceptof "now" becomesdisplaced from its privilegedpoint on the time-line:this is the char- acteristicgesture of displacementparticular to the languageof time travel. "Now"is no longer"'here" but "there."There is no longera privileged"now" of any empiricalforce. Withinthe discourseof the time-travelstory, "now" becomes shiftingand unstable,indicative of any pointin the past, present,or future inhabitedby the subjectivepresent of the time traveller.24Language recognizes temporalsubjectivity; it is always limited to privatetime. No words exist to fix the absolutepresent, the Now, while narratingthe time traveller'sexperiences in the past or futurerelative to that absolutepresent. Wells'sNarrator demonstrates this linguisticpeculiarity as he speculateson the Time Traveller's"present" whereabouts: "He may even now-if I may use the phrase-be wanderingon some plesiosaurus-hauntedOolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the TriassicAge" (12:117). As as point of reference,the time travelleracts as both the functional (not absolute)center of the temporalstructure and as a floating signifier released from any fixed relationshipto that structure.Time-travel stories, then, are never "really"versions but are always subversionsof traditional temporalstructure; their absoluterejection of an absolutePresent works to negate the very concept of temporal Presence, "temporal presence as point...ofthe now or of the moment"(OG, p. 12). 5. In an important early essay, "The Rediscoveryof the Unique" (1891), Wells demonstrateshis anticipationof severalkey Derrideanconcepts. The focus of the essay is the "rediscovery"of difference:"All being is unique,or, nothingis strictlylike anythingelse. It implies...thatwe only arriveat the idea of similarbeings by an unconsciousor deliberatedisregard of an infinityof small differences"(Philmus & Hughes:23; Wells's emphasis).Even more significantis Wells'sconclusion:
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[The "humandelusion" of sameness]has grown with the growthof the mind, and is, we are quite preparedto concede, a necessary featureof thought.We may here remark, parenthetically,that we make no proposal to supersede ordinarythinking by a new method....This...isoutside the scope of the present paper, and altogetherpremature. (ibid., pp. 25-26) Accordingto Derrida,the present moment is no more conduciveto new methodsof thinkingthan was the late 19thcentury: the movementsof deconstructiondo not destroy structuresfrom the outside. They are not possible and effective, nor can they take accurateaim, except by inhabitingthose structures.Inhabiting them in a certain way. (OG, p. 24; emphasis in original) Wells'sanswer to this dilemma,that there is no groundupon which to base any attackupon conventionalized systems of thoughtoutside of those systems themselves, proves to be the same as Derrida's. Just as Derridean deconstructionis a profoundlyironic enterprise, one which, in the wordsof Paulde Man, "splitsthe subjectinto an empiricalself thatexists in a stateof inauthenticityand a self thatexists only in the formof a languagethat asserts the knowledgeof its inauthenticity"(p. 197), so The TimeMachine is a pro- foundlyironic text. It simultaneouslyinhabits the worldof ClassicalPhysics and ironizesthat world-view. We havealready seen how the classicaldefini- tion of time is crucial to the logic of the narrativeevents and to the Time Traveller'sinterpretations of these events. It will thereforebe worthwhileto examine in more detail the cumulativeeffects of Wells's ironizationof the Newtonianparadigm on the "meaning"of his novella. An implicit confession of disloyalty to the classical world-view is embeddedin the very title of this "exemplary"Newtonian production. While "the time machine"refers to the inventionby which the Victorianscientist moves into the far future, Wells's title invites at least two more readings. Mark Rose points out that the machineof the title is also "the relentless turningof history,...adiabolic mechanismwhose workings lead to death" (p. 101).Time is the machinewhich will eventuallycrush the life out of the very universe. A third readingreminds us, self-reflexively,that the time machineis the story itself, which createsthe time of its particularnarrative universe.Although Wellsian time travelis a directliteralization of linguistic metaphor-diachrony treated as synchrony-his story-as-time-machine works its own considerable deconstruction upon the time machine of ClassicalPhysics. RobertM. Philmusand David Y. Hugheshave discussedin some detail the subversionof the Newtonianworld-view which takes place on the level of narrativeevent in The TimeMachine. They link this to the risinginfluence of evolutionarytheory in the latterhalf of the 19thcentury: The newly posited entanglementof species in the destiny of one another reopened the question of 'humanity's'relation to (the rest of) natureand to the universe at large in part because it rendered the concept of isolation (itself a spatial concept) anachronistic,if not obsolete. (p. 3)
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Wells'srepudiation of "the anthropocentricfallacy" (Philmus & Hughes:8) is demonstratedboth in the disappearanceof the human race from the universeof the far futureand in the disappearanceof the TimeTraveller him- self from the universeof the story.26What is of interestwithin the terms of this presentdiscussion is thatthere is a parallelattack against such a centrist perspectivein the text'sironically compromised sense of commitmentto the ideal of logocentrismas well, an ideal framedby the same epistemefrom within which the intellectual conventions of scientific positivism were developed. The very discourse of Wells's text subvertsthe notion of full presence throughits ironic treatmentof this traditionalmetaphysical con- cept. This can most clearly be seen in the developmentof the "framestory" withinwhich the eventsof The TimeMachine occur. Thereis a constantten- sion between the logocentric idealism of Wells's Narratorand the events whichhe reportsat secondhand. VincentLeitch explains that the logocentric system always assigns the origin of truthto the logos-to the spoken word, or to the Word of God. Moreover, the being of the entity is always determined as presence: the 'object' of science and metaphysics is characteristically the 'present entity.' In these circumstances, the full presence of the voice is valued over the mute signs of writing....Writing representsa fall from full speech. (p. 25) It is this hegemony of Speech over Writing that Derrida criticizes in Saussure; Wells's Narrator is a supporterof the same metaphysics of presence and would undoubtedlyagree with Saussure(p. 30) that "writing obscureslanguage; it is not a guise for languagebut a disguise."The "truth" of the Traveller'sstory is apodicticallyproven through his own accountof it, a conventionused in the 19thcentury to supportthe fictionaltruths of texts as disparate as Jane Eyre (1848), David Copperfield (1850), and Dracula (1897) (although, as a compendium of written reports, Dracula is already contaminatedby a fall from immediatepresence). Wells's Narratoris so extremely conscious of the truth-valueof the presentvoice thathe entersthe followingdisclaimer for his own second-hand account: In writingit downI feel withonly too muchkeenness the inadequacyof pen and ink-and, aboveall, my own inadequacy-toexpress [the] quality [of the originalnarration]. You read, I will suppose,attentively enough; but you cannotknow the speaker'swhite, sincere face...nor hear the intonationof his voice.(2:21-22; my emphasis) Derridareminds us that writingin the logocentricsystem is alwaysthe sign of a double absence:"the absence of the signatory,to say nothing of the absence of the referent"(OG, p. 40). The Time Machine calls particular attentionto these absences,since the only I/eye-witnessdisappears from the text. Committedas Wells's novella apparentlyis to the traditionin which Presencesupports the truthof narrativeevent, it neverthelessinforms us at the end that"the Time Travellervanished three years ago. And, as everybody knowsnow, he has neverreturned" (12:117). This last-minutesupplementary
This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:20:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions DECONSTRUCTINGTHE TIMEMACHINE 213 informationchanges the very essence of the narrative:the presenceof the Time Travellerhas, in fact, always alreadybeen an absence.This is further underlinedby a strangeand seemingly irrelevantoccurrence which takes place during the Time Traveller's exploration of the Palace of Green Porcelain.He recountsthat, "yieldingto an irresistibleimpulse, I wrote my name upon the nose of a steatite monster from South America that particularlytook my fancy"(8:89). The unnamedTraveller has at last named himself, but that name exists on a monumentfrom the past buried in a museumin the future-never in the present.Presence is alwaysalready past or to come: it is neverimmediate. If, as Derridadefines it, "a writtensigna- ture implies the actualor empiricalnon-presence of the signer"("Signature Event Context,"p. 194), then Wells'stext here reinforcesthe absenceat its core, since not only the "signer"but his very signatureis lost in time.
6. Parallelling this subversion of logocentrism in Wells's text is the displacementof the humansubject from the centerto the peripheryof natural structure, and, finally, to a point outside the picture altogether. This movementis analogousto the reversalof the evolutionaryprocess which the Travellerdiscovers to be the fate of humanity.If we view the time from which the Travellerembarks as one in which humanityis the center and meaningof the naturalworld, then the worldof 802,701is one in which the Eloi and the Morlocks are less central and more marginal-that is, less "human"and more "natural"-thanbefore; in the distantfuture at the end of the world, humanityis no longereven a peripheralpresence but a complete absence. In this extremedisplacement of the subject,only the object, the world of nature,remains. The "object"has overwhelmedthe "subject"in a deconstructivereversal of the traditionalscientific conviction of the powerof the Cartesian res cognans over the res extensa. The Time Machine, to borrow the wordsof Paulde Man, is an ironictreatment of "thepurely instrumental, reifiedcharacter of [our]relationship to nature."It demonstratesthat "Nature can at all times treat[us] as if [we]were a thingand remind [us] of [our]facti- tiousness, whereas [we are] quite powerless to convert even the smallest particle of nature into something human" (p. 196). Under these circumstances,the gestures of "observation"and "reason"become sadly diminishedand ineffectual.Humanity as transcendentalsignified, the ground of the Time Traveller'sexplorations into the future,has been removedas part of the narrativeequation; and any "meaning"based on such a groundhas vanishedwith it. This is supportedby the ironic role playedby the figure of the White Sphinxin the text. The variousreferences to the Oedipusmyth in The Time Machine (noted in Ketterer:340-41, and Huntington:44-45) are focussed uponthis inscrutably"colossal figure" with its "unpleasantsuggestion of dis- ease" (1TM 3:27);the answerto its ancientriddle is also the answerwhich correctlyinterprets the worldof 802,701.Only now the riddleof the Sphinx might more suitablybe: "Whatis missingfrom this picture?"In each case, the answer is the same: "Man";but while the original question bespeaks presence,the revisionin TheTime Machine points to absence.The discourse of Wells'stext is also constitutedby absence,so thatthe Time Travelleris a
This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:20:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 214 SCIENCE-FICTIONSTUDIES, VOLUME 14 (1987) correlativeon the textuallevel of the absencerepeated on the level of narra- tive event.27The end result of the Time Traveller'sreadings of the futureis absence, just as his absence is the final note in our readingof The Time Machine. In his early writings,Wells exploredboth absolutistand psychologistic approachesin his discussions of the nature of time, oscillating between conceptsof cosmic determinismand humanfree will in his earlierversions of The TimeMachine. Philmus and Hughes(pp. 47-56) demonstratethe bal- ance achieved in the final version between Wells's idea of "the universe rigid"28and the theorythat time is a subjectivephenomenon, stressing Wells's ultimateadherence to a principleof complementarityin whathas becomethe definitiveedition of the text. In like manner,John Huntingtonemphasizes that "thecoexistence of oppositesis a fundamentalelement in all of Wells's early fiction,"and cites the juxtapositionof the worldof 802,701against the presentworld of The TimeMachine as one exampleof what he terms "this two world structure"(p. 21). He goes on to arguethat "by a series of fairly simple transformationsa numberof otheroppositions in Wells'searly fiction derive from this...structure"(p. 22), such as "the moral opposition"(p. 33) representedby the scientistand the anarchistof "TheStolen Bacillus" (1895). What is of interesthere is Huntington'scontention that the typicalWellsian opposition,that between nature and culture,is an ironic one, maintainingas it does "a constantand balancedreciprocity[;]...the one cannotexist without the other" (p. 22). The two world(view)s which are woven together throughoutboth narrativeevents and textualdiscourse in The TimeMachine function in a mannersimilar to Huntington's"two world structure."As he concludes,"in such a structureneither world in itself holdsour interest;what is importantis the two of themtogether and the linkedoppositions they estab- lish" (ibid.). (We might observe here once again that oppositions as oppositionstend to exist "in the eye of the beholder";as a rule, they are effectsproduced by differencerather than fundamental antitheses.) The end resultof the presenceof these complementaryworld-views is a play betweennarrative metonymy (The Time Machine as extrapolativework) and textual metaphor(The Time Machine as figurativetext), which is as integralto its structureas is the play betweenpresent and future.There is an implicitinsistence upon this in the Time Traveller'sinvitation to his listeners (whichis also a self-reflexivemoment of textualduplicity): Takeit as a lie-or a prophecy.Say I dreamedit in theworkshop. Consider I havebeen speculating upon the destinies of ourrace until I havehatched this fiction.Treat my assertionof its truthas a merestroke of artto enhanceits interest.And taking it as a story,what do youthink of it?(12:112) The TimeMachine is essentiallyan exercisein aporia, an oscillationbetween the desire for presenceand the awarenessof absence,between the objectivity of extrapolationand the subjectivityof metaphor,between-one is tempted to add,given its historicalmoment-the 19thcentury and the 20thcentury. The Narrator'sacknowledgment of humanineffectuality in the face of a determinedfuture-his "If that is so, it remainsfor us to live as thoughit were not so" (12:117)-begins to takeon additionalresonance at this point, in
This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:20:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions DECONSTRUCTINGTHE TIME MACHINE 215 view of the complementaryexistence of both world-views in the text. Balancedagainst the deterministicuniverse of the Newtonianparadigm is the refutationof that very paradigm.If the future is not, after all, a fixed and determinedone, thenperhaps the refusalon the partof humanityto readtime as thoughit were inevitablemight avert the devolutionto whichthe Traveller bearswitness. 29 CertainlyThe TimeMachine is about"making a difference";its narrative defamiliarizesapparently natural class-structures by takingthem to theirbio- sociologicalextremes; its discourseachieves at least a partialdisplacement of the logocentricsystem through a comparableact of deconstruction.Like the (anti)philosophyof deconstruction,it both admits the ineluctabilityof our metaphysicalstructures and effects a defamiliarizationof those structures.It acknowledgesits inevitable inscriptionwithin the logocentric system of Classical Physics at the same time as it inhabitsthat system "in a certain way,"with an ironicskepticism which questions some of its own fundamental narrativecommitments. In 1933, in his "Prefaceto the Scientific Romances,"Wells referredto TheTime Machine as an "assaulton humanself-satisfaction" (p. v). The stra- tegic positionoccupied by The TimeMachine accomplishes much more than simplyan overtattack upon 19th-centurymoral complacency, however; in its deconstructionof some fundamentalaspects of traditionallogocentric dis- course, it looks forwardto the projectsof muchcontemporary critical theory. It attemptsat once to displacea smug humanityfrom its privilegedposition at the centerof creationand to remindus of our ineluctableties to the natural world. And what, after all, is the aim of post-structuralisttheory if not a continuation, in another form, of that same "assault on human self-satisfaction"?
NOTES
1. This essay was in part made possible through a grant from the Social Sciencesand Humanities Research Council of Canada. 2. See, for example, Larry Dwyer's essay, "Time Traveland Changingthe Past,"for a discussionof the implicationsof the Einstein-Maxwellequations and Kurt Godel's solutions to the field equationsof general relativity"which permit closed timelike lines to exist in spacetime" (p. 344). Dwyer's is only one of many philosophicalattempts to justify at least the logical possibilityof time travel.Other challengingdiscussions include David Lewis's "TheParadoxes of Time Travel"and PaulHorwich's "On Some AllegedParadoxes of TimeTravel." 3. DonaldDavidson points out that"most metaphors are false"(p. 39). For his discussionof this aspectof metaphor,see "WhatMetaphors Mean," pp. 39-41. 4. Time travelis the resultof a kindof linguisticextrapolation, then, even as it functionsas literarymetaphor. I am indebtedto DavidKetterer for this observation. 5. Rose is applyingthe distinctionsbetween metaphor and metonymy drawn by Jakobsonin his "TwoAspects of Languageand Two Types of AphasicDisturbance." See especially,Jakobson, pp. 76-82. 6. The most overtly"metonymical" trend in SF today is probablycyberpunk, whichmay be one of the reasonsthat it standsout as a "movement."The sensibilityof
This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:20:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 216 SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 14 (1987) a novel like WilliamGibson's Neuromancer (1984), for instance,is firmlyrooted in technologicalextrapolation, although it is by no means devoid of metaphorical content.Cyberpunk seems to be an SF currentflowing against the contemporarytide. 7. In his recentessay, "FuturologicalCongress as MetagenericText," Robert M. Philmus has discussed several aspects of generic self-reflexivityin The Time Machine, demonstrating its value as a model in this context as well. The heterogeneityof meaningof Wells'stitle, to which I referbelow, is also a key factor in Philmus'sanalysis. See especiallypp. 313-15. 8. TerryEagleton writes, for example,that "the genuinely theoretical'question is always violently estranging, a perhaps impossible attempt to raise to self- reflexivitythe very enablingconditions of a rangeof routinizedpractices..." (p. 89). 9. Suvin'sdefinition of the genre,which is the most usefulyet devised,reads in full: "SF is...a literarygenre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interactionof estrangementand cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment"(pp. 7-8). 10. Carl Freedmanhas made a similarpoint aboutthe conjunctionof SF and criticaltheory, which I will quote at length,because of its importance: It is...a matterof the sharedperspectives between SF and criticaltheory, of the dialectical standpointof the SF tendency,with its insistence upon historical mutability,material reducibility, and, at least implicitly,Utopian possibility. In a sense, SF is of all genresthe one most devotedto historicalspecificity: for the SF worldis not only one differentin time or place fromour own, butone whose chief interest is precisely the differencethat such difference makes, and, in addition, one whose difference is nonethelesscontained within a cognitive continuumwith the actual....(p.186-87) 11.This is never posed as a "FatherParadox." It is as if the SF communityis evadingthe Oedipalaspects implicit in its favoritemodel of temporalparadox. 12. Even a narrativeline as uncomplicatedas that of The Terminator(1984) creates the potentialfor endless repetitionwhich the viewer must tacitly ignore in orderto collaboratein the closureof the film. 13. The sign, for example,"is alwaysthe supplementof the thingitself" (OG, p. 145), at the same time as it standsin for the full presencewhich it both defers and differs from. The aim of Derrida'sargument is to deny the notionof origin, of the unsupplementedentity. Natureis a constructof culture;speech of a largerwriting (hence Derrida'sgrammatological undertaking); "the thing in itself"of the sign used to "replace"it. For a useful summaryof Derrida'stheories of the supplement,see Leitch, pp. 169-78. 14. As Leitchexplains, the alwaysalready "works to insertthe supplementinto any seeminglysimple or pure metaphysicalconceptualization" (p. 171). 15. My initialthinking about the effects of Relativityon the developmentof the time-travelmotif was generatedby AndrewGordon's excellent essay, "Silverberg's Time Machine."Gordon discusses, for example,the disparityof subjectand form in manytime-travel stories: "the problem is thattime-travel stories have been tryingto deal with twentieth-centuryconceptions of time in narrativeforms borrowedfrom the 19th-century"(p. 348). These narrativeforms, of course, were developed to explainthe realitycreated by nineteenth-centuryscientific metaphors. 16. Since availing myself of Barthes'distinction between oeuvre and texte, I have come across another instance of the same applicationto quite different circumstances.This suggeststo me thatthe Barthiantreatment of oeuvreand texteis a flexible notion with potentialfor a wide rangeof applications.See PatricePavis's discussionof oeuvre and texte (pp. 2-12).
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17. In "SignatureEvent Context,"Derrida draws attentionto the political characterof suchoppositions: an oppositionof metaphysicalconcepts...is never a confrontationof two terms, but a hierarchyand the order of a subordination.Deconstruction cannot be restrictedor immediatelypass to a neutralization:it must...putinto practicea reversalof the classicalopposition and a generaldisplacement of the system.It is on that condition alone that deconstructionwill provide the means of interveningin the field of oppositionsit criticizesand that is also a field of non- discursiveforces. (p. 195;emphasis in original). 18. In her Prefaceto Of Grammatology,Gyatri Spivak neatly exemplifiesthe dual effects of differancein her discussionof the natureof the sign: "Such is the strange 'being' of the sign: half of it is always 'not there' [the signified, which is constantlydeferred] and the otherhalf always'not that' [the signifier, which is always differentfrom that which it signifies]"(p. xvii). 19. As Spivak points out, however, "the description of the object is as contaminatedby the patternsof the subject'sdesire as is the subjectconstituted by thatnever-fulfilled desire" (p. lix). 20. In his "Preface"to the 1931Random House edition, Wells draws attention to his applicationof the Second Law of Thermodynamicsin The TimeMachine (pp. ix-x). 21. See Philmus'sdiscussion of this point in his "The TimeMachine: or, the FourthDimension as Prophecy"(pp. 534-35). 22. Britishphysicist Michael Shallis writes:"the world exists for us only in the form we clothe it. Ourdescriptions or explanationsdefine our world.Our technology manifestsour explanations" (p. 197). 23. Borgesdemonstrates a morepragmatic approach to the subject,however, in his ironic "A New Refutationof Time."After developingarguments which seem to deny the objectivereality of time, he neverthelessconcludes that "denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying the astronomicaluniverse, are apparent desperationsand secret consolations....Timeis the substanceI am made of....The world, unfortunately,is real; I, unfortunately,am Borges" (p. 222). Borges thus neatly sums up the apparentimpossibility of reconcilingcontemporary scientific descriptionsof "reality"with our humanexperience of it. 24. The separationof privatefrom publictime, or as HilaryPutnam phrases it, "therelativistic notion of propertime" (p. 669), has beenrecognized as the only route logic can take to defend the philosophicalpossibilities of time travel. See, for example, Putnam'sessay, "It Ain't Necessarily So" and David Lewis's "The Paradoxesof TimeTravel." 25. Even this "obvious"reading suggests the play of differance:Philmus and Hughes(p. 48) draw attentionto the fact that Wells's"invention" includes not only the machine itself, but "the notion of travellingthrough time" and, even more importantly,"its rationale." 26. The formal irony of The TimeMachine has elsewherebeen identifiedby BernardBergonzi, for example,in his "TheTime Machine: An IronicMyth," and by Hughesin his "H.G.Wells: Ironic Romancer." 27. 1 am here distinguishingbetween two aspects of The Time Machine as narrativefiction, based upon Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan'sstructuralist distinctions (pp. 3-4). The first is thataspect of "writtendiscourse," or "text,"through which "all the items of the narrativecontent are filtered";in the case of The TimeMachine, the text is permeatedby the absence of the Time Traveller,necessitating a secondary Narratorand a second-hand"translation." The second aspect is that of the "story," "the narratedevents" of the fiction, which in the presentinstance include the final
This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:20:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 218 SCIENCE-FICTIONSTUDIES, VOLUME 14 (1987) disappearanceof humanityfrom the worldas well as the "actual"disappearance of the Travellerhimself. 28. Althoughthe originalversion of Wells'sessay entitled"The Universe Rigid" has been lost, he includeswhat might be consideredan "abstract"of this lost essay in the first book versionof The TimeMachine, published in the UnitedStates by Henry Holt. This "abstract"probably gives a muchtruer idea of the originalargument than does the reconstructionundertaken by Wellsnearly 40 yearsafter the fact in his 1934 Experiment in Autobiography (see Philmus & Hughes, pp. 4-5, 51-53). 29. I am indebtedto David Y. Hughesfor this reminderof possible alternative readingsof the Narrator'sconclusion.
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RESUME VeronicaHollinger. La deconstructionde la machine du temps.-Les me'thodes analytiquesde deconstructionde JacquesDerrida offrent une charpenteefficace par laquelle on peut examinercertains aspects du motif du voyage dans le temps. La science-fictionet la deconstructions'occupent du processusde la defamiliarisation, l'unpar le deplacementdu pre'sent sociallpolitiquelculturel, I'autre par ses effortsen vue de demasquerla nature conventionnelledes .
Abstract.-Both SF and deconstruction are involved in the processes of defamiliarization,the former through its displacementof the sociallpoliticallcultural present, the latter throughits attemptsto expose the conventionalnature of the
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"gesturesof thought"of the Westernmetaphysical tradition. In addition,time travel itself always achievesa deconstructionof certainclassical notionsabout the nature and structureof time. It is first necessaryto "read"time before writing a time-travelstory: withinthe terms of a set of metaphorssuggested by RolandBarthes, one can conclude that stories whichsupport the classicalNewtonian definition tend to read timeas "work" ("euvre"), while stories whichexplore the Einsteinianparadigm of physical reality tend to read time as "text"( "texte").Within the classicalparadigm, time is linear, homogeneous,and uncentered.Relativity may thus be identifiedwith free play and differance, the (non)principlesof theDerridean "post-structure. " At first glance, H.G. Wells'sThe Time Machineappears to be an exemplary reading of time as classic "work." Wells's novella is structured around an extrapolativereading of timefuture, and seems to supportthe convictionthat the powers of science will ultimatelyuncover the secretsof the naturalworld. However, because it is a time-travelstory, The TimeMachine necessarily deconstructs any notionof absolutetime, displacingthe conceptof "now"from itsfixed point on the time-line, and subvertingthe privileged position of public over private time. In addition, Wells'stext undertakesits own particulardeconstruction of the classical world-view.In his early essay, "TheRediscovery of the Unique,"Wells demonstrates his anticipationof severalkey Derridean concepts, in particularthe convictionthat metaphysicalstructures must be underminedfromthe inside. This, in effect, is what is achievedin TheTime Machine, which, as a consequence,is a profoundlyironic text. The subversionof 19th-centuryscientific values which it undertakeson the level of narrative event is complementedon the level of textual discourse by its deconstructionof the metaphvsicsof presence. The end result is a play between narrativemetonymy (The TimeMachine as extrapolativework) and textualmetaphor (The Time Machineas figurativetext), whichis as integralto its structureas is the play betweenpresent andfuture. (VH)
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