Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 8-24-2018 10:00 AM Agnotologies of Modernism: Knowing the Unknown in Lewis, Woolf, Pound, and Joyce Jeremy Colangelo The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Allan Pero The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Jeremy Colangelo 2018 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Epistemology Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, and the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Colangelo, Jeremy, "Agnotologies of Modernism: Knowing the Unknown in Lewis, Woolf, Pound, and Joyce" (2018). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 5668. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/5668 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Abstract Agnotologies of Modernism examines the productive role of ignorance in the work of several key modernist authors. Borrowing concepts from speculative realist philosophers like Quentin Meillassoux, Graham Harman, and Jane Bennett, as well as such thinkers as Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida, the dissertation endeavors to read modernism epistemologically, and treats ignorance as an active and creative force that often plays a key structuring role in the imaginative world of the text. Drawing from Bruno Latour’s notion of a “black box,” the study shows how ignorance can be transposed into an ontological entity which can then be attributed positive traits and characteristics.