principles of literary study: fiction principles-s14.blogs ... … · principles of literary...
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Principles of Literary Study: Fictionprinciples-s14.blogs.rutgers.edu
Prof. Andrew Goldstone ([email protected])Office hours today: 3–5 p.m. in Murray 031
Monday, April 28, 2014. Gibson (2).
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exam
Short answer 50%
Eight paragraph-long answers, requiring you to cite examples from thereading. Some choice. Key terms and concepts, short interpretivequestions, and passage identification.
Updated principles list online soon. Not to be memorized.
Essay 50%
Choice of two questions. Will require you to cite and specificallydiscuss at least three readings.
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exercises
▶ check Sakai for past exercises
▶ half-credit for make-ups by Monday
▶ Gibson exercise due this Thursday
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review
▶ the scholarly conversation: being relevant
▶ apply a theory▶ dispute a thesis▶ extend an interpretation▶ …
▶ Gibson’s future
▶ looks backwards as well as forwards▶ tropes of decay frustrate the idea of progress▶ human-machine hybrids (cyborgs): what kind of relation to
technological transformation do they suggest?
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review
▶ the scholarly conversation: being relevant
▶ apply a theory
▶ dispute a thesis▶ extend an interpretation▶ …
▶ Gibson’s future
▶ looks backwards as well as forwards▶ tropes of decay frustrate the idea of progress▶ human-machine hybrids (cyborgs): what kind of relation to
technological transformation do they suggest?
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review
▶ the scholarly conversation: being relevant
▶ apply a theory▶ dispute a thesis
▶ extend an interpretation▶ …
▶ Gibson’s future
▶ looks backwards as well as forwards▶ tropes of decay frustrate the idea of progress▶ human-machine hybrids (cyborgs): what kind of relation to
technological transformation do they suggest?
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review
▶ the scholarly conversation: being relevant
▶ apply a theory▶ dispute a thesis▶ extend an interpretation
▶ …
▶ Gibson’s future
▶ looks backwards as well as forwards▶ tropes of decay frustrate the idea of progress▶ human-machine hybrids (cyborgs): what kind of relation to
technological transformation do they suggest?
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review
▶ the scholarly conversation: being relevant
▶ apply a theory▶ dispute a thesis▶ extend an interpretation▶ …
▶ Gibson’s future
▶ looks backwards as well as forwards▶ tropes of decay frustrate the idea of progress▶ human-machine hybrids (cyborgs): what kind of relation to
technological transformation do they suggest?
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review
▶ the scholarly conversation: being relevant
▶ apply a theory▶ dispute a thesis▶ extend an interpretation▶ …
▶ Gibson’s future
▶ looks backwards as well as forwards▶ tropes of decay frustrate the idea of progress▶ human-machine hybrids (cyborgs): what kind of relation to
technological transformation do they suggest?
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review
▶ the scholarly conversation: being relevant
▶ apply a theory▶ dispute a thesis▶ extend an interpretation▶ …
▶ Gibson’s future
▶ looks backwards as well as forwards
▶ tropes of decay frustrate the idea of progress▶ human-machine hybrids (cyborgs): what kind of relation to
technological transformation do they suggest?
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review
▶ the scholarly conversation: being relevant
▶ apply a theory▶ dispute a thesis▶ extend an interpretation▶ …
▶ Gibson’s future
▶ looks backwards as well as forwards▶ tropes of decay frustrate the idea of progress
▶ human-machine hybrids (cyborgs): what kind of relation totechnological transformation do they suggest?
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review
▶ the scholarly conversation: being relevant
▶ apply a theory▶ dispute a thesis▶ extend an interpretation▶ …
▶ Gibson’s future
▶ looks backwards as well as forwards▶ tropes of decay frustrate the idea of progress▶ human-machine hybrids (cyborgs): what kind of relation to
technological transformation do they suggest?
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the future, cont.
a future that is recognizably and painstakingly drawn from the moderncondition(Bruce Sterling, Preface to William Gibson, Burning Chrome)
‘I told you so. You damned fools.’… They are the italics of theperpetually impatient and somehow perpetually unworldly futurist,seeing his model going terminally wrong in the hands of the less clever,the less evolved. And they are with us today, though I’ve long sincelearned to run shy of science fiction that employs them.William Gibson, “Time Machine Cuba,” in Distrust That Particular Flavor(New York: Putnam, 2012), 207–8
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the future, cont.
a future that is recognizably and painstakingly drawn from the moderncondition(Bruce Sterling, Preface to William Gibson, Burning Chrome)
‘I told you so. You damned fools.’… They are the italics of theperpetually impatient and somehow perpetually unworldly futurist,seeing his model going terminally wrong in the hands of the less clever,the less evolved. And they are with us today, though I’ve long sincelearned to run shy of science fiction that employs them.William Gibson, “Time Machine Cuba,” in Distrust That Particular Flavor(New York: Putnam, 2012), 207–8
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the future past
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a deadchannel. (3)
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genre redux
Discussion
Are we allowed to read this kind of book in this kind of class?
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genre system
Just as genres form a horizon of expectations against whichany text is read, so are they themselves subsumed within abroader horizon formed by a period’s system of genres.(Frow, Genre, 70)
Principle 1.2.3.3 Viewed synchronically, genres form a systemstructured by, among other things, hierarchy in symbolic and economicterms.
Principle 1.2.3.4 A given genre system does not necessarily look thesame to all participants, in its own time or later.
Principle 1.2.3.5 Literary scholars both use and remake genre systemsin their own work.
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Figure: Science Wonder Stories no. 1, 1929, from philsp.com.
Science Fiction Studies (1973–)
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wasn’t this in The Matrix?
Whatever of my work may be there, it seems to me to have gottenthere by exactly the kind of creative cultural osmosis I’ve alwaysdepended on myself. If there’s Neuromancer in The Matrix, there’s TheStars My Destination and Dhalgren in Neuromancer, and much else besides,down to and including actual bits of embarrassingly undigested gristle.And while I was drawing directly from those originals, and many others,the makers of The Matrix were drawing through a pre-existing“cyberpunk” esthetic, which constituted as much of a found object, forthem, as “science fiction” did for me….
When I began to write Neuromancer, there was no “cyberpunk”. TheMatrix is arguably the ultimate “cyberpunk” artifact.
(“The Matrix: Fair Cop,” 2003, williamgibsonblog.blogspot.com)
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wasn’t this in The Matrix?
Whatever of my work may be there, it seems to me to have gottenthere by exactly the kind of creative cultural osmosis I’ve alwaysdepended on myself. If there’s Neuromancer in The Matrix, there’s TheStars My Destination and Dhalgren in Neuromancer, and much else besides,down to and including actual bits of embarrassingly undigested gristle.And while I was drawing directly from those originals, and many others,the makers of The Matrix were drawing through a pre-existing“cyberpunk” esthetic, which constituted as much of a found object, forthem, as “science fiction” did for me….
When I began to write Neuromancer, there was no “cyberpunk”. TheMatrix is arguably the ultimate “cyberpunk” artifact.
(“The Matrix: Fair Cop,” 2003, williamgibsonblog.blogspot.com)
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cyberspace
“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions oflegitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taughtmathematical concepts…”
And flowed, flowered for him, fluid neon origami trick, the unfolding ofhis distanceless home, his country, transparent 3D chessboardextending to infinity. Inner eye opening to the stepped scarlet pyramidof the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority burning beyond the greencubes of Mitsubishi Bank of America. (51–52)
This was it. This was what he was, who he was, his being. He forgot toeat. (59)
Discussion
What does this description do? What is cyberspace supposed to belike, and why does it matter?
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the sensorium link
The abrupt jolt into other flesh. Matrix gone, a wave of sound andcolor….She was moving through a crowded street, past stalls vendingdiscount software, prices feltpenned on sheets of plastic, fragments ofmusic from countless speakers. Smells of urine, free monomers,perfume, patties of frying krill. For a few frightened seconds he foughthelplessly to control her body. (56)
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next
▶ Neuromancer to chap. 16▶ commonplace▶ Gibson exercise by Thursday noon
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course evaluations
▶ with my thanks