Virtual Discourse, Memory Systems and Archive in the Involutes of Thomas De Quincey
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2017 Involute Analysis: Virtual Discourse, Memory Systems and Archive in the Involutes of Thomas De Quincey Kimberley A. Garcia The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2355 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] INVOLUTE ANALYSIS VIRTUAL DISCOURSE, MEMORY SYSTEMS AND ARCHIVE IN THE INVOLUTES OF THOMAS DE QUINCEY by KIMBERLEY ANNE GARCIA A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2017 i © 2017 KIMBERLEY ANNE GARCIA All Rights Reserved ii Involute Analysis Virtual Discourse, Memory Systems and Archive in the Involutes of Thomas De Quincey by Kimberley Anne Garcia This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______________________ ________________________________________________ Date Alan Vardy Chair of Examining Committee _______________________ ________________________________________________ Date Eric Lott Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Alexander Schlutz Matthew Gold THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Involute Analysis Virtual Discourse, Memory Systems and Archive in the Involutes of Thomas De Quincey by Kimberley Anne Garcia Advisor: Alan Vardy Brief Abstract: Thomas De Quincey’s involutes inform metaphysical thought on memory and language, particularly concerning multiplicity and the virtual, repetition and difference. When co-opting the mathematic and mechanic involute in Suspiria de Profundis, De Quincey generates an interdisciplinary matrix for the semiotics underpinning his philosophy of language and theory of memory and experience. Involutes entangle and reproduce. De Quincey’s involute exposes the concrete and actual through which all experience accesses the abstract or virtual. The materiality of their informatics and technics provides a literary model and theoretical precursor to a combination of archive and systems theory. The textuality of involute system(s)—both De Quincey's mind and narrative—accommodates the intersections: archive recognizes proliferating layers of re-inscription or a system of discursivity and systems observes the self-regulation of processes and signals/messages in communication. De Quincey's involutes, as a method, transform memory and experience into involute texts: texts invested in the form and layered reading processes of fragmenting and sedimenting data within the strata of memory storage, actively sorted, re-fragmented, reiterated. Thomas De Quincey’s coining of involutes parses as a metaphysical concept foundational to his theory of memory and his philosophy of language. By historicizing De Quincey’s nomenclature in the mathematics and mechanics of his moment—particularly geometric concerns—I locate the parameters of his concept as structuralizing the processes of language and memory. The result is a proto-post-human prior to the digital-technological age. De Quincey informs his own concept through related yet distinct figures: the palimpsest, the caduceus, the network (or spider-web), and the archive. I argue De Quincey provides a juncture between memory hardware and its operating system or software, language, through his own narratological exploration of semiotics and virtuality. De Quincey’s involute, as a basic unit of experience, exposes the technics of involutes as reinforcing the concrete and actual through which all experience accesses the abstract or virtual. In Suspiria de Profundis Thomas De Quincey “coin[s]” “involutes” as the “perplexed combinations of concrete objects” of experience. He demonstrates these “compound experiences incapable of being disentangled” through the narrative structure of his essay (centered on exploring a childhood moment of “contracted” time). The essay traces his system(s) of iv remembrance, excavating successively the “endless strata” of memory “not displaced” in “the simultaneity” of “the deep memorial palimpsest of the brain”—a storage system of sorting and assembling. His attempt renders, in effect, an involuted structure: “The situation of one escaping by some refluent current from the maelstrom roaring for him in the distance, who finds suddenly that this current is but an eddy, wheeling round upon the same maelstrom.” Incorporating philosophy, archaeology, geometry and mechanics (among other disciplines), De Quincey’s involute philosophy underscores a unique cyclicality of experience, encoding, and (re-)iteration: post-/modern concerns address these ideas across similar disciplines. As a method for new media and technics, involute theory analyzes digital works and experiences invested in the fragmenting and sedimenting of data in layers of memory storage, actively sorted, re-fragmented, reiterated. Moreover, involutes are most germane to new media texts, such as video games, in which the compound text itself stores/sorts fragmented memory data and experience (re)-inscribes a text consisting of iterations actualizing virtual textual memory. In analyzing texts suspended in lines of differentiation, “involutes” engage texts as a virtual discourse system, foregrounding multiplicity and repetition (or for video games, play and replay: the save option). This dissertation will be a resource for De Quincey’s metaphysical ideas, attuned to his awareness of cross-disciplinary advances, which merits further discussion in Romanticist scholarship, and also will offer a method for system-archive literary-textual analysis, which, in practice, might be coined involute analysis. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Everything means something, otherwise nothing would(n’t) mean anything. This dissertation blossomed and flourished under the direction of Alan Vardy, whose breadth of knowledge directed growth and subtle pruning through refracted illumination. Alan Vardy’s capacity for recall, his memory not unlike Thomas De Quincey’s own marvel, offered a living model for my work. Without an advisor alert to the varied areas intersecting in this project, this dissertation would never have come to fruition. The idea for this project germinated out of the scholarly direction Vardy provided in my first work on De Quincey’s “Savannah-La-Mar” and its architectural and temporal themes. De Quincey's involutes rooted in my earlier groundwork with David Greetham, pursuing new media theories, textual scholarship, and the range of theory concerned with language and the text. Alexander Schlutz’s insights into metaphor, philosophy, and literary theory assisted in grafting the project’s engagement of systems and virtuality. Matt Gold’s attention to media and textuality trimmed and shaped the final form of this dissertation. I trust Thomas De Quincey's involute may continue to fascinate others as much as his concept does for me. To all those directly and indirectly connected to my time on this project, you all contributed in ways beyond knowing—and I am grateful for each and every. To the one who journeyed with me from the beginning, providing a nurturing working environment, thoughts of you course within every word. vi CONTENTS Introduction 1 Part One: Immaterial Media and Memory’s Metaphors 27 Chapter One: Suspiria de Profundis and Memory Narrative 33 Chapter Two: De Quincey’s Involutes and Experiences in Memory 90 Part Two: Involute Media and Involute Methods 183 Chapter Three: Involute Media and Involute Methods 185 Chapter Four: Involute Texts and Involute Analysis: “The Vortex of the Merely Human” 244 Conclusion 323 Bibliography vii IMAGES 1. Involute Figure 95 2. Pythagoras Tree with symmetry and asymmetry 292 3. Fractals resulting in the “chaos game”— algorithm M. Barnsley describes in 1988 296 viii Introduction Even the inarticulate or brutal sounds of the globe must be all so many languages and ciphers that somewhere have the corresponding keys—have their own grammar and syntax; and thus that the least things in the universe must be secret mirrors to the greatest. —Thomas De Quincey, “Infant Literature” (1851-1852), 741 Rather than providing strictly poetic expression in his sublime textuality, Thomas De Quincey’s expansive sense of utterances invites a provocative reading of the world’s contents as communicative and articulate. De Quincey’s claim expresses a Foucauldian sense of discourse: “discourse is constituted by a group of sequences of signs, in so far as they are statements, that is, in so far as they can be assigned particular modalities of existence,” or, in other words, signification with an intended and signified meaning.2 The context of De Quincey’s observation is his childhood fascination with a literary passage involving geomancy, yet his lingering reflection on the passage conveys his preoccupation with semiotic inquiry. He positions language as guide for understanding or at least recognizing patterning, particularly sequence and series,3 while accepting the possibility that the underlying meaning, and potentially even the signifying 1. Thomas De Quincey, Autobiographical Sketches: Vol. I: Chapter III: “Infant Literature”, The Works of Thomas De Quincey, in 21 Volumes, eds.