Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Michel Houellebecq's new novel The Possibility of an Island, has a couple of references to Heidegger. One, in a passage I can no longer find, the narrator describes an article in which poetry is described much as it is in Wozu Dichter?. The other reference is a chapter epigraph:
Nothingness turns to nothingThat doesn't appear to be a known quote, probably munged when translated from the original German, via the novel's French. It's probably: "The nothing nothings." Apparently a bowling term. Sadly, despite the author picking up some ontology, and being "the only French novelist worth reading since Camus (TM)", he's still another French educated Cartesian, and the novel's about the modern chasm between the subject and objects. ¶ 8:06 PM
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This reminds me of the lack of science fiction novels that demonstrate any real understanding of technology (i.e., Heidegger's answer to "the question"). Cyberpunk's oft-celebrated matrix-and-meatpuppet ontology is of course wholly Cartesian too.
The closest to anything remotely approaching a phenomenology of the equipmental contexture (Zeugzusammenhang) I've seen is in the work of Ben Marcus (Notable American Women, The Age of Wire and String) but it's not really science fiction (Wire and String is only "fiction" because it is not non-fiction.)
The closest to anything remotely approaching a phenomenology of the equipmental contexture (Zeugzusammenhang) I've seen is in the work of Ben Marcus (Notable American Women, The Age of Wire and String) but it's not really science fiction (Wire and String is only "fiction" because it is not non-fiction.)
I whole heartedly agree on the cyberpunk novels--their protagonists very much continue in the tradition of the existentialist novel.
I've found any novel that remotely resonates with what Heidegger proposed about ontology. Perhaps only poetry is up to the task, as Wallace Stevens, Jorie Graham, and Anne Carson have demonstrated.
Hadn't heard of Ben Marcus, but Notable AMerican Women is now on my list of things to get once my pile of books to read shrinks somewhat. Thanks.
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I've found any novel that remotely resonates with what Heidegger proposed about ontology. Perhaps only poetry is up to the task, as Wallace Stevens, Jorie Graham, and Anne Carson have demonstrated.
Hadn't heard of Ben Marcus, but Notable AMerican Women is now on my list of things to get once my pile of books to read shrinks somewhat. Thanks.
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