Phenomenologies of Mars Exploring Methods for Reading the Scientific Planetext in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy Patrick Peter Cronin A thesis submitted to the Department of English and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 ii Declaration of Originality This thesis contains no material that has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or institute for higher learning. I affirm that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, and I certify and warrant to the best of my knowledge that all sources of reference have been duly and fully noted. 29 June 2017 ____________________ ____________________ Patrick Cronin Date iii Abstract In 2013, The New Yorker Magazine called Kim Stanley Robinson ‘one of the greatest living science-fiction writers’. And in 2008, Time Magazine named him a ‘hero of the environment.’1 Yet, no lengthy study has yet been attempted on any of his fiction. This thesis aims to redress this absence with a long-form reading of one of the high peaks of his achievement: the Mars Trilogy. It considers that what I am calling the ‘planetext’ (or planet-text) is a vital narrative space. It assumes the perspectival form in which the Trilogy is told is crucial to understanding how its planetexts are read. The several viewpoints in the Trilogy comprise the several attempts of this thesis toward understanding not only how the planet is used in the novels, but also how it arranges and functions according to textual principles of readability. My several readings adopt the scientific bases of each of these viewpoints, and develops a sense of the way different characters experience the planet around them as either enabled by science, or confounded by it. ‘Planetext’ is therefore a useful neologism for interpreting how such a vast and multidimensional site as Mars is, or is not, encountered through these sciences. Understanding the planetext of Mars is therefore a phenomenological task, with the requirement of reading how each character is able, or unable, to experience and comprehend their experiences. A sense of the phenomenologies of Mars means this thesis must take the approach of seeing how different sciences yield different phenomenologies, and different experiences of the planet. By calling Mars a planetext, this thesis investigates the ways in which language, writing, and textuality participate in building the planet of the Trilogy, treating writing as a coefficient of terraforming. Understood as a kind of planetography, or planetary writing, the planetext (or host of planetexts) foregrounds the written-ness of the Martian space in Robinson’s Trilogy. The planetextual space of the novels shapes a variety of readerly paths through the narrative, which are in turn adopted. As a long study, this thesis understands the planet as a sizeable arena, which challenges the view any one reading can give of it. Acknowledging this as a limitation, its four chapters focus only on four characters, aiming to supplement an overview style of reading the Trilogy with a series of close 1 Tim Kreider, ‘Our Greatest Living Novelist?’ December 12, 2013. The New Yorker Magazine. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/our-greatest-political- novelist; Oliver Morton, ‘Kim Stanley Robinson: Heroes of the Environment 2008,’ Wednesday September 24, 2008. Time Magazine. http://content.time.com/ time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1841778_1841779_1841803,00.html iv readings. Understanding the textual status of the planet means paying specific attention to how characters either find meaningful access to the planet, or fail to find any. For Ann Clayborne, a geologist who wants to keep Mars uncontaminated and un-colonized, the planetext forms itself as a zone of différance, in which the task of interpreting the non-living planet must coincide with her resistance to the terraforming project. With Michel Duval, the Martian psychiatrist, readability is itself questioned as he attempts to overcome his depression and homesickness. For Saxifrage Russell, one of the chief terraformers, a discussion over scientific method takes the path of this thesis away from the troubling and compromised planetexts of Ann and Michel, toward how textual meaning is enabled and opened. With Hiroko Ai, a final theorization of what I call viridical force is proposed as a planetextual function, based around the Trilogy’s mention of viriditas and Jacques Derrida’s idea of force, to come to terms with how the planet makes itself available to the reader as expansive, rich in possible meaning, and always arranging itself around the reader. Between the opening of the planetext and its equivocations, this thesis charts its course. v Contents Abstract iii Acknowledgements vi Abbreviations vii List of Figures viii INTRODUCTION The orbit of critical reading ix CHAPTER ONE Ecology without life: Phenomenology of the non-living world 1 The wandering exorbitant: Phenomenology of the surfaces of Mars 28 CHAPTER TWO Archaeology of a method: Michel Duval and the Jameson program 58 Headfirst into the black sun: Depression as Overdetermination 89 CHAPTER THREE Modus saxifraga: Saxifrage Russell and scientific method 105 The spur of the mind: Da Vinci Crater and scientific insight 139 CHAPTER FOUR Writing the green planet: Viridical force as areographia 161 In the Martian bardo: Dying as the instruction of Viridical life 182 CONCLUSION Leaving the planet 211 BIBLIOGRAPHY 213 vi Acknowledgements The many thanks I will extend to those who have helped me through the writing of this thesis cannot be overstated. This experience has on all fronts brought such immense changes to my life I cannot begin to measure them. I can only extend my deepest thanks to those who have been a part of it. To all people I have to thank, I cannot thank any of you enough for opening so many doorways onto a new and different world. The greatest memories I will hold of this time is of the people I have met, and the deepening of existing relationships, which has made this the richest experience of my life. To my loving and supportive parents, none of this could have been possible without your enduring encouragement and support through all the years of my education, especially the difficult ones. And to my brothers and sisters – Michael, John, Elizabeth, Samantha, and my two endearing sisters-in-law, Julia and Carolyn, and to my three lovely nieces Katherine, Nicole, and Emma – I must extend all my love and appreciation. Without the great supervision of Professor Peter Marks, I doubt this thesis could have come together. Thank you, Peter, for your comments, insights, suggestions, advice, and encouragement in the long time it took me to climb up onto this task and get it done. As you told me, writing can sometimes be a painful disease, and a good bedside manner was often required to get me through it. Thank you, also, Dr. Helen Young, for setting me on the right track in my first year. Without your supervision, I might have floundered and not be where I am today. Thank you, also, to David Longo, Geoffrey Abeshouse, Jin Hien Lau, Doug Lerpiniere, and Merwyn Lim, for your continuing friendships. The time we spent together has been, and continues to be, an immense help. I cannot thank you enough. Thank you also to Paul Esber, with whom I have shared so many educative experiences since high school. You have all been constant pillars of support. I must also thank all those with whom I began this degree: Lydia Saleh Rofail (with Stephen Rofail and the late Mocha), Sara Crouch and Craig Johnson, Nat Pree, David Fitzgerald, Tim Steains, Tegan Jane Schetrumpf, Jordan Church, Jessica Sun, and Niklas Fischer. Thank you also to Colette Estelle, Chris Rudge and Adam Hulbert. You have all contributed such value to my life I cannot begin to thank you enough. I must also be extend my gratitude to my second family of PGARC OTC, who helped make this process so much easier and enjoyable; to Han-eol Lee, Sarah Bendall, Mark Pert, Rachel Kennedy, Kimberley Bridgette Dimitriadis, Hollie Pich, Marama Whyte, Emma Kluge, Russell Coldicutt, Dan Dixon, Nathalie Camerlynck, Ben Vine and Emmet Gillespie, Georgie Lawrence, Orla McGovern, Christian Novak, Anna Bolly, and Rhys Herden. To Darius Sepehri for your stimulating conversation and enthusiasm. And, last but not least, the adorable Sally and Luka. A final dedication must be given to Molly, my dearest friend, whom we lost along the way. vii Abbreviations KIM STANLEY ROBINSON Red Red Mars (New York: Bantam Spectra Books, 1993). Green Green Mars (New York: Bantam Spectra Books, 1994b). Blue Blue Mars (New York: Bantam Spectra Books, 1996). Antarctica Antarctica (New York: Bantam Spectra Books, 1998). Short A Short, Sharp Shock (Grand Rapids, MI: Anti-Oedipus Press, 2015 [1990]). FREDRIC JAMESON Archaeologies Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (London: Verso, 2005). Antinomies Antinomies of Realism (London: Verso, 2013). Seeds The Seeds of Time (United States: Columbia University Press, 1996). Unconscious The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (New York: Routledge & Kegan Press, 1981). Postmodernism Postmodernism; or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991). M. Papers The Modernist Papers (London: Verso, 2007). JACQUES DERRIDA Grammatology Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1974). Spectres Spectres of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. Translated by Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994). Spurs Spurs: Nietzsche’s Style. Translated by Barbara Harlow (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1979). Writing Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass (Chicago University Press, 1979).