A Case for a Cosmological Interpretive Strategy of Literature
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Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English Fall 12-10-2018 Reenchantment: A Case for a Cosmological Interpretive Strategy of Literature Salvatore Talluto Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Talluto, Salvatore, "Reenchantment: A Case for a Cosmological Interpretive Strategy of Literature." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2018. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/211 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. REENCHANTMENT: A CASE FOR A COSMOLOGICAL INTERPRETIVE STRATEGY OF LITERATURE by SALVATORE TALLUTO Under the Direction of Christopher Kocela, PhD ABSTRACT Abstract: Even before the likes of Max Weber and Frederic Jameson pushed forward the idea of disenchantment, feelings of dissatisfaction and meaninglessness caused by the technological and economic developments of what they called our modern and postmodern ages, it had been seen in much of our literature, art, and popular culture. A few early examples in drama would be Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and Arthur Miller’s The Man Who Had All the Luck, in which characters question the material world in search of what they feel is some elusive meaning in their lives. Some later examples of drama that tackle these issues are Paula Vogel’s The Long Christmas Ride Home and Sara Ruhl’s In the Next Room (Or the Vibrator Play) in which the issue of how we develop meaningful relationships is portrayed as essential to answering the question of how we can make our lives more meaningful. Examples in fiction which explore these issues of dissatisfaction and meaninglessness would be Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Fifth Book of Peace, all of which deal with the issues of trying to navigate through a cosmos that is so much more powerful than one’s self while trying to survive and maybe even change a society that just seems to lust after material things and power, often to destructive ends. This dissertation’s contribution to an analysis of these artistic works is to synthesize the tools of process physics, process philosophy, process theology, and theopoetics in order to form a cosmological interpretive strategy of literature that leads towards the process of reenchantment, the idea that we as individuals are still integrally connected to society and the cosmos. INDEX WORDS: Disenchantment, Reenchantment, Cosmology, Process Philosophy, Quantum Entanglement, Process Theology, Theopoetics, Modernism, Postmodernism, Theatre of the Absurd, Contemporary Literature, Literary Theory. REENCHANTMENT: A CASE FOR A COSMOLOGICAL INTERPRETIVE STRATEGY OF LITERATURE by SALVATORE TALLUTO A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2018 Copyright by Salvatore Talluto 2018 REENCHANTMENT: A CASE FOR A COSMOLOGICAL INTERPRETIVE STRATEGY OF LITERATURE by SALVATORE TALLUTO Committee Chair: Christopher Kocela Committee: Christopher Kocela Matthew Roudane Paul Schmidt Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University April 2018 iv DEDICATION Thank you to my mother, Michele, and my not so little, little ones, Dominic and Dellila, for putting up with all of this doctoral and dissertation chaos. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you also to my committee, Christopher Kocela, Matthew Roudane, and Paul Schmidt for bearing with me through this process. Thank you also to Dr. Gabler-Hover for always pushing me to go above and beyond in my critical inquiries. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ V 1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 2 2 THORNTON WILDER AND ARTHUR MILLER: A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, SPACE, AND MATTER................................................................................................ 28 3 ENCOUNTERS WITH THE ABSURD: GRAVITY’S RAINBOW, ENDER’S GAME, AND UNDERWORLD ................................................................................................... 60 4 ACTING, ACTIONS, AND ACTING OUT: PROBLEMS OF IDENTITY, THE BODY, AND THE MIND/PSYCHE/SOUL/SPIRIT IN CONTEMPORARY DRAMA ... 120 5 AGENTS OF AGENCY: MAXINE HONG KINGSTON, OCTAVIA BUTLER, THEOPOETICS, AND THE SHAPING OF REALITY ...................................................... 159 6 CONCLUSIONS ..................................................................................................... 202 WORKS CITED............................................................................................................ 208 2 1 INTRODUCTION Over the past twenty to thirty years or so there has been a growing restlessness concerning what has come to be known as our postmodern age. Bruno Latour asks whether we ever were truly postmodern; Amy Elias, Christian Moraru, and Basarab Nicolescu all ask whether we are now past the postmodern age and in the formation of a new era; Judith Butler asks how far we can rely on scientistic1 and medical perspectives about the body and the soul; and Slavoj Žižek asks whether such questions themselves construct a discussion in such a way that no truth is possible. The names and defining characteristics of what is to follow postmodernism are still up for debate; however, one striking feature that can be found consistently in the work of critics like those above is a renewed focus concerning our place as humans within the larger cosmos. One frustrating issue that emerges from questions like those posed above is that, for the most part, they do not engage with contemporary literary criticism. This frustration has led these critics and others like David Ray Griffin, Suzi Gablik, James Buchanan, Nancy Howells, and William Beardslee to start thinking about new ways of interpreting literature that include cosmological questions. This is also why this dissertation proposes a new cosmological interpretive framework from which to analyze literature. This introduction will serve as a review of the theories and ideas which have inspired, influenced, and helped shape this discussion. This introduction is meant to be both academic and poetic in that it 1 Viewpoints favoring science and material, physical observations over any sort of philosophical or theological viewpoints. 3 will try to set the stage and the mindset for a reading of the compilation of texts and theories found in this dissertation. A cosmological interpretive strategy could potentially be used as an interpretive framework for any number of potential situations and topics; however, the main concern in this dissertation is about its use to interpret art, particularly literature. This discussion will privilege the Emersonian definition of art as it relates to nature. Emerson explains that “Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture” (Emerson 6). Art then becomes natural elements which are shaped by human effort, or through our will. When we speak, we use our mouths, diaphragms, and vocal chords to force air particles to vibrate at a certain level in a certain acoustic environment. When we write, we force our will on wood, graphite, ink, plastic, LCD crystals, etc. We create lines and shapes that we then imbue with meaning to represent a particular sound or letter. From Emerson’s standpoint, both speaking and writing become potential forms of art as a result. We speak to each other and write to each other as a form of communication which bears artistic potential. Friedrich Nietzsche explains how such potentially artistic forms of communication developed as a social need between humans, stating “[c]consciousness is really only a net of communications between human beings; it is only as such that it had to develop; a solitary human being who lived like a beast of prey would not have needed it” (Nietzsche 298). Nietzsche explains here how humanity developed communication, signs of speech and writing, for social use to express our needs and desires to each other. Nietzsche goes on to explain how this communication structures our consciousness: “[t]he human being inventing signs is at the same time the human being who becomes ever more keenly conscious of himself. It was only as 4 a social animal that man acquired self-consciousness--which he is still in the process of doing more and more” (Nietzsche 299). So, Nietzsche reveals here how the invention of signs for speech and writing is a path to self-consciousness because of the desire to express our needs and desires to other human beings. If we combine these two strains of thought—those of Nietzsche and Emerson--then, we can see that inventing signs, particularly for speech and writing, is to mix our will with our natural surroundings. Mixing our will with our natural surroundings produces what we call art out of our desire to communicate. The production of art then is also a social exercise; it is a form of