PüSTMODERNISM, SCIENCE AND UTOPIANISM

PüSTMODERNISM, SCIENCE AND UTOPIANISM

Patricia Waugh DURHAM UNIVEASITY

In 1929. Eugen Jolas. the editor of transilion (the avant-garde literary magazine whieh was publis­hing Joyce's Work in Progress) announced what he called the new Revolution of Language. His essay on 'James Joyce and the Rcvolution of Language', however, was also intcnded 10 case into history the verbal macaronics of Joyce's experimental liction as a monument to the latcst revolution in science which had givcn birth 10 a new cosmos. Thc autonomy of thc literary word would, he argued, similarly 'hammer out a ver­bal vis ion that dcstroys time and space' .' By 1933 thc physicist Max Planck had publishcd his popular book on the new scicncc -Where is Science Going ?-. lts thernc was that scicntists too had dcstroyed time and space. Planck wrotc of the revolution in knowlcdge which procecded frorn thc work of scicntists such as 1-lcisenberg. Einstein and his own thcory of the quanturn: ' ow the iconoclast has invaded the temple of science. There is scarccly a scientilic axiom that

is not nowadays dcnicd by somcbody' .' In 1929 writers and scientists were struggling 10 reconci­le thc worlds of ordinary sensory experienee with the strange u ni verses opened up by the ew Seience.

Fifty years later, in 1979. Jean-Francois Lyotard published his famous 'report on knowlcdge', an enquiry into the statc of sciencc, cntitled The Postmodem Condi1ion, and in so doing he decla­red modernity to be exhausted: the emancipatory and progrcssivist narratives of the Enlightenment could no longer be grounded in the certainties of classical realist sciencc. for which ewtonian mechanics. Baconian method and Cartesian rationalism had provided the foun­dations. Physics had provided the paradigm for thís ·modern science'. combining rigorous deductive analysis with empirical inductíon from controllcd experiment. However, according to Lyotard's analysis, logic had now fallen prey

Pérez Guerra, Javier. M. Teresa Caneda Cabrera. Marta Dahlgren. Teresa Fernández-Colmeiro and Eduardo J. Varela Bravo eds. ( t 996). Proceedings of the XJXth lntemationat Conference of AEOEAN. Vigo: Universidad e de Vigo.

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to thc subvcrsivc cncrgics of rhctoric, and thc modcl of a dctachcd scicntist collccting thc data of an incn naturc had bccn banishcd by dcvclop­mcnts in thc newcst scicnce: in cosmology. chaos and catastrophc thcory. In 1979. as in 1929, it would scem that writers and scicntists wcrc again engaged in ovcrlapping epistemic activity.

lf this is thc case t!1cn. lirstly. why has thcrc been so much ongoing invcstment in the idea of thc two cultures', so named in the Cambridge Rcid lccturc of 1959. whcn C.P. Snow allacked litc­rary intcllcctuals for thcir avcrsion to seíentitic knowlcdgc and for their cultural pessimísm? (F. R. Lea vis replícd by deriding scientísts as phi­listínc tcchnologíco-f3cnthamites who wcrc des­troying thc organic ríchncss of twenticth-ccnlllry culture.) Secondly, what is thc rclationship bet­ween literary and scíentitic cultures in thc twcn­tieth ccntury: can we idcntífy a dístínetívcly postmodcrn wrn in thís. a sccond Rcvolutíon of the World and a sccond Rcvolutíon in Scícntífíc Knowledge? In this papcr, 1 will approach thcse íssues from thrce major perspectivcs: tirst. to examine the 'two cultures' debate and to look at its rcprcscntation of thc relationshíp bctwcen líterary and scier1lífic cultures; sccondly, to exa­mine thc postmodern readíng of thc ew Scíencc offered by theorists such as Lyotard and to compare thís wíth the way in which scientísts themselves havc tended lo represen! thcír own work; ami thirclly, to return to that earlicr rnorncnt in thc erncrgcncc of litcrary Modcrnism and to examine thc rclations bctwcen modcrníst writing and thc ew Scicncc of that períod: thc work of scíentists such as Max Planck, Werncr Heísenberg and cíls Bohr.

What rnost distínguíshcs thc 'postmodcrn' rea­ding of thc ncwcst scicnccs is a kind of Utopíanísm which. for all Jolas's cxcitcment, is not thc domínant mood rcncctcd by writcrs and thcorists who cngagcd with scicncc in thc 1920s. As books by scicntísts such as Stcphcn Hawking, Paul Davícs and James Glcick would suggcst. thc latest vcrsions of thc cw Scicncc are mediatcd in antimatcrialist and cvcn spíritua­list voeabularícs prcviously thc preserve of cw Agc pscudo-scicncc. Onc dctccts in such maní-

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fcstations of thc 'postmodcrn condítion' a dis­tinct yearníng for a rcmarríagc of natural scícncc and natural theology which would actually pro­duce thc grandcst narrativc of all: a rcconcília­tíon of cosmos and conscíousncss. subject ancl objcct, fact and valuc. Cosmology has becomc thc sítc of a rcjuvcnated Utopíanism which has secpcd into thc work of postrnodem theorísts and wríters such as ltalo Calvíno and Jcanncttc Wintcrson. Sincc the pcriod of 1-ligh Romantícism. the idea of thc aesthctíc as a space of redcrnption and rcconciliation has becn a powcrful ídeology and onc gcncrally opposed by thosc on thc scícncc sidc of the 'two cultures' debate. In Lyotard's readíng. howcvcr. not only do the cpístcmíc spaccs of scicncc and litcraturc begin to le;¡k ínto cach other, but thc worlds of scicncc and thosc of the acsthctic bcgin to look ontologícally indístinguíshablc too. In thc post­modern worlds of lncletermínacy, Chaos ancl Catastrophc, as in thc virtual rcalítícs of cybcrs­pacc, scicncc woulcl sccm to be as acsthetííciscd as cvcrythíng clsc in thc postmodcrn conditíon. Paul de Man once argucd that thc strugglc for rcconcíliatíon was thc dcfiníng fcawrc of twcn­tieth century art: íf wc are to belícvc the postrno­dern rcadíngs of thc Ncwcst Scícncc thcn we havc arrivcd at last in Utopía as that o-place whích is thc othcr sidc of nihilísm. lt will be my argument. however. that announccmcnts of Paradísc Regaíncd are prcmaturc. to say thc least: ínstcad of cmbracing postmodern Unccrtainty tout cour wc should contínuc to take heed of the more sceptícal and more paínful con­di! ion of modcrn Doubt which is thc legacy to us of Enlíghtcnrncnt thought ami classical sciencc.

T hc two cultures

First then, wc should examine thc two cultures debate indepcnclently, for a moment, of thc rcla­tions bctwcen Modcrnísm and Posunodcrnism. In a reccnt introductíon to thc Faber Book of Science, its editor (a profcssor of English Litcraturc). Jolm Carey, observes that 'givcn thc boundlcss írnplicatíons of scicncc. ít sccms strangc that pocts ha ve not usecl it more'. A fcw pagcs latcr, thc note of apocalypse cntcrs: 'As scícncc has grown, so. incvitably. has the ígno­rancc of thosc who do not know about ít. Within

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the mind of anyone educatcd exclusivcly in artistic and literary disciplines. thc arca of dark­ncss has sprcad cnormously during the later twenticth century. blotting out rnost of modern knowledge. A new species of cducated but benighted being has come into existencc- acre­aturc unprccedentcd in the history of lcarning. where cducation has usually aimcd to eradicatc ignorancc' .' Carey is only the most recent of a line of combatants in what C.P. Snow termcd thc "Two Cultures Debate''. 13oth Snow and Carey. in fact, sharc an antipathy towards intcllcctua­lism (see Carey's The lntellectuals and thc Masscs, for example). a distrust of positivist phi­losophy. and a dccidcdly positivistic intcrprcta­tion of scicncc, litcraturc and knowlcdgc. In his Cambridge lccturc. Snow advanced a dcfcncc of the moral health ofthc scicntific culture as oppo­scd to thc degcncratc and sclf-indulgcntly tragic vicw of life promulgatcd by thc literary intcllcc­tual. Modcrnists such as Pound and Lewis. with their 'ambiguous rclations with Fascism' and their narcissistic moral vanity, were viewcd as particularly rcprcscntative of twenticth-century literary trends.' However, this view of the lite­rary intellectual as a moral degenerate to be compared unfavourably with the plain-spcaking philanthropic scientist, is actually a cultural construction which reaches back to the late nine­teenth ccntury. Max ordau 's infamous Degcneration was translated into English in 1895 and advanced an image of the avant-garde artist as a decadent carrier of moral pathology, hostto a morbid virus which was underminig the health of Wcstern culture and prccipitating its decline. Thc image was rciteratcd in a variety of contexts: in Wclls's Tlu: Time Machine ( 1895), for cxamplc. wherc thc ovcrrcfined, ennervatcd and decadcnt acstheticism of the Eloi has provi­ded perfect conditions for thc proli fcration of the race of worm-like but evolutionary adapted and scientilic Morlocks whosc base intcllectual cxis­tence will, for at least sorne time, inherit the earth (thc story, of coursc. renccting Wclls' own ambivalent position on the two cultures issue). In 1ordau's book, writers and artists such as Wagner, 1 ietí'..schc, Zola. lbsen and the French Symbolists take the place of the Eloi: hystcrical and neurasthcnic represcntatives of a negativc genetic strain blossoming in the hothouse

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atmosphere of the ncw metropolitan cultures. Like Snow later. 1 ordau (a Lamarkian) also regarded scicnce as the mcans by which to con­trol such threatening evolutionary tendencies: science, that is, conceivcd in the image of a robust positivism or ·mcthod'. Only this kind of sturdy positivism rnight qucll the rising tide of rclativisms and the impcnding nihilism of a Dusk of Nations. For 1 ordau. aesthcticism was scen to involve a morbid sclfdcstructivencss ini­mical to cultural hcalth. lt is hardly surprising that Nordau turns to scicncc as a sourcc of social salvation. In place of thc morbid, introvcrted and ncurasthcnic artist, he upholds the salutary com­mon scnse of the scicntist following thc clcar path sct out by 1 ewtonian mechanics. arriving at truth through cnrcful expcrimcnt and inductivc rcasoning.

From thc othcr sidc of thc debate. howcvcr, the picturc looks considcrably diffcrcnt. Dcfendcrs of thc acsthctic continually reprcsentlitcrary and artistic culture as the locus of an oppositional and conscrving hurnanist valuc structurc in a scicntistic ancltcchnocratic world. In The Other Voice ( 1992), for cxamplc. Octavio Pa% conclu­dcs with an esscntially Romantic cclcbration of the (continuing) organic powcr of thc imagina­tion: 'Min·or of thc fraternity of the cosmos. thc pocm is a modcl of what human socicty might be. In thc facc of thc destruction of nature. it offcrs living proof of thc brothcrhood of the stars and clemcntary particlcs, of chcmicals and cons­ciousncss ... Thc univcrsc is a tissue of livc afli­nitics and oppositions. and cach pocrn is a prac­ticallesson in hannony and discord'.' Paz looks to thc 'organic form· of thc pocm as a surrogatc for that hannony of thc spheres banishcd by rnodcrn rcalist science (and which postmodern scicncc has promiscd to give back). Art becornes thc locus of rccovcry of a rcconcilcd univcrsc wherc consciousncss and cosmos, mind and naturc, language and cxpcricnce, no longer face cach othcr across a gaping void. Thc sphcrcs which wcre so radically scparated at the birth of thc modcrn world, in thc lirst mornents of Cartcsian doubt. and with the foundational cnu­mcrations of Ncwton ·s Principia Mathematica, may once again be conjoined in thc paradise regained of the poctic space. Litcrary culture,

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therefore. in the familiar Eliot/Lcavis account of it. comes to represen! the possibility of a healing of that 'dissociation of sensibility' originating in thc first scientific rcvolution of the seventccnth century. In this myth of origins. the moment of the birth of modern science is seen also to dcli­ver into history a twin - a redemptivc aesthetic which would compensatc for science's disen­chantrnent of the world, its projection of the human race into the blankncss of intcrstcllar cokl.

Nordau's account is, of coursc, as simplified as Snow's. and both Lcavis ancl Paz are actually attacking scientism rather than science pcr se. In fact. both si des ofTcr a distortcd perccption of thc relations between litcraturc and science. E ven by the cnd of thc ninctccnth ccntury. importan! shifts wcre occurring within scicncc itself which were bcginning to leavc common sensc and positivism high and dry as either guarantors or rencctors of truth. By 1900. science would collapse certainty far more dramatically and etTcctively than Paterian aesthetics or Wildean wit. Bctween 1900 and 1930, in particular. thc battle between idealists and realists, positivists and pragmatists, would be complicated and immensely sharpened by a series of scientific discoveries: Planck's account of the quantum in 1900. thc dcvelopment of the wave theory of l ight, the kinetic theory of gases, Bohr's theory of the atom and principie of complcmentarity. Einstein's papers on special and general relati­vity. lleisenberg's Uncertainty Principie. Similarly. in philosophy too. Russell and Moore inibated a decisive break with 13radlcy's Absoute ldeal ism in the publication of the Principia Mathematica and the Principia ethica, and bet­ween 191 O and 1915, Russell developed his the­ory of knowlcdge and published The Problems of Philosophe in 1912. Wittgenstein would cha­llenge epistemology with logic in The Tractallls. Each of thcm, ancl Whitehead too. wrote about and engaged with the new scientitic discoverics. recognising that philosophy itself. ns a critique of knowledge, would forcver be clwnged by the

ew Science. \Ve will examine shortly the legacy to Postmodernism of this paradigmatic shift in knowledge, but first of all, it is worth pausing to consider some of the importan! ways

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in which scientists themselves contested thc positivist version of sciencc in the earlier part of the twentieth ccntury.

Why did the discoverics listed above carry this kind of impact? Thrce, in particular, wcre cen­tral: Planck's observation that clcctromagnetic radiation is cmitted in discrcte packets or quanta introduced the notion of discontinuity, acausality and randomness into thc understanding of thc fundamental composition and activity of mattcr. Further. l leisenberg's Uncertainty Principie sug­gested that all physical qualities that can be obscrvcd are subject to unpredictable nuctua­tions therc is an inherent indeterminism in the behaviour of thc fundamental pnrticlcs of lifc. for at thc quantum levcl no dctinite predictions can be made about the behaviour of any system (the founding principie for later e haos and catas­trophe theories). In his book of 19301 The Physica/ Principies of the Quanlllm Theory, Ileisenberg spclled out thc implications of this insight: 'the traditional requirement of scicnce ... pcrmits a division of the world into subject and object (observer and observed) ... The assump­tion is not permissible in atomic physics: the interaction between observer and object causes large changes in the systems being observed, because of the discontinuous changes charaete­ristic of the atomic processes' .' lleisenberg's grammar is noticeably inexact, for he wants to move beyond the division into subject and object, beyond saying that it is either mattcr which is discontinuous or perception which is uncertain (beyond positivism and impressio­nism). but language tends to reinforce the very categories which he is trying to rcject. Even as a scientist. however, Heiscnberg recogniscs thc primacy of language in the fonnulation of com­municable knowledge.

cils Bohr's Principie of Complementarity (my third example) was actually taken directly into literary criticism by I.A. Richards and Wiliam Empson, as both dcvelopcd concepts of irony. ambiguity and paradox which would domínate the criticism of poetry for the next fifty ycars. As we shall see later, thc more radical implications of Uncertainty and Complememarity would also

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provide an epistemological justilication for the abandonment of episternology in the poststructu­ralist and postmodernist turn which displaced the New Critica! hegernony of the forties and lif­ties. According to Bohr's thesis. there is an ine­radicable arnbiguity in all quanturn systems. An elcctron can be a wave or a particle. depending on the experimental situation. but cannot be deli­ned exclusive! y as cither one or the other. As in lleisenberg's theory. observation is implicated in, rather than outside of, any expcriment and is crucial to thc crcation of form: ambiguity is an inhcrcnt propcrty of rnauer ancl not sirnply an effect of perceptual limitation. Of the wavc/par­ticle thesis. Bohr claimcd that its discovery necessitated the ·nnal renunciation of the classi­cal ideal and a radical revision of our attitude towards the problem of physical reality' ' What he promised was the end of Cartesian dualism. of rnaterialist science and the treadmill of Newtonian deterrninism. l t appeared that cons­ciousness might then be reconciled with rnatter not simply in the spaces of the organicist work of art. but as elernents in the actual cosmos. lf both are built out of the same fundamental particlcs. mutually partake of the same condition of vir­tuality, then the universe seems closer to a Heraelitean rather than ewtonian model. Classical science is no longer 'true' but sirnply intelligible with reference to its own conceptual frame: what is true in the world of 1ewtonian mechanics cannot be true in that of quantum mechanics. Seicnce no longer represents one method of investigation of a realm of universal truth. Like the work of art. the quantum world is argucd to be fundamentally indeterminate: the free space of the aesthetic seems now to be inte­gral to the previously separate and deterrninistie world of physical seience.

Heisenberg would come to express the problern in terms of language: 'J\ny concepts or words whieh have bcen formed in the past through thc interplay between the world ancl ourselves are not rcally sharply delined with respect to their meaning ... we practically never know prcciscly the limits of their applicabilhy ... The concepts may. however, be sharply delined with regard to thcir connections ... which can be expressed by a mathematical scherne ... But the lirnits of their

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applicability will in general not be known' .' Interna! coherencc rather than externa! corres­pondence may be our only source of certain rneaning and. perhaps more signilicantly. rnight provide thc means by which to wrest freedom frorn externa! determinisms. or course. not all

1ew Physicists accepted this. Einstein continued to resist the more radical interpretations of the New Physics. He continued to belicve that scien­ce must rernain a realism and that rnatter conti­nues to exist with welldelined properties - whet­her we can see it or not. The world is uhimately stable and only apparently affccted by our apprc­hensions. For him. quanturn mechanics was incomplcte and, like many another modern. he belicvcd there must cxist a deeper leve! of dyna­mic variables which bcstow an apparent indetcr­minism at the surfacc leve! whilst maintaining their own corc structural form .

What must be cvident. even from this absurdly brief account of the scicntilic revolution of thc early twentieth ccntury, is that thc sciencc in it bears littlc resemblance to the vcrsion rcprcscn­ted in the 'Two Cultures·· debate - whether it is the version offered by Snow or by Leavis. Snow's sciencc is modellcd on nineteenth-cen­tury positivism and Lcavis's attack is actually on the scientism which has followed from this posi­tivist model. The epistemological implications of the early twcntieth century revolution, howc­ver. have only rccently (and within the rathcr diferent terms of thc postmodern debate) come to takc on the enormous significancc in thc wider culture first registercd in the more narrowly scientific onc as early as the 1920s by physicists such as 1 leisenberg and 1 eils Bohr. Certainly the Utopian claims for this kind of sciencc havc blossomed as part of the postmodern agenda. That it has takcn so long for the implications of the ew Science to impact on the general cultu­re is thc consequencc of a range of cultural and historical factors chief of which must be thc sig­nifican! return to positivist epistemologics in the 1950s as suggcsted by the enormous succcss and popularity of A.J. Ayer 's Language. Tmth all(/ Logic ( 1936) which was rcissued in 1950. Ayer·s book indced set the tone for the common scnsc cmpiricism and pragmatism of that decadc. A reviva! of philosophical interest in the cw

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Science did not emerge until the various cntl­ques of method gathered force in the sixties. and evcn then it was initially overshadowed by the countercultural focus of critique of technology as the strong arm of capitalism. rather than on the demise of positivism as the universal basis of modern epistemology. The Counterculture was anti-science. but more in the spirit of Leavis's cclebration of 'Life' than as a sustained episte­mological critique of method. By the 1980s. however. the cultural mood finally responded to the full irnplications of the earlier scientitic revolulion and science. like everything else, began to be poslmodernised. C.P. Snow's vision of a robust positivisl kind of science has been radically challengcd: far from being regardcd as a source of moral heallh and growth, applied scicnce would now come 10 be rcgardcd by many as the scapcgom for every moral evil of thc cenlury. The oflicial mMkers of liberal progress in the period have been precisely lhose dcvelop­ments (in applied science and lcchnology) which have mos1 clearly signalled 1he inadequacies of ils ralional e1hics-gene1ic engineering, 1he split­ling of lhe atom and ils consequences, in vitro fertilisalion, etc. lncreasingly too. scienlilic mel­hod or knowlcdge has been regarded as unable to provide for (or even, on occasion, 10 acknowled­ge the exislence ot) allthose human needs, spiri­lual, communal and affective, whieh seem lo resisl or exceed quantilicalion.

However. whilst positivisl scicnlism and lcchno­logy havc moved more on lhc dcfcnsivc, purc scien1is1s havc bcgun to recons1ruc1 lhcir aclivi­lics in lhc lcrms of a new Ulopian vocabulary of rcconciliation, opcn-cndcdncss. indctenninacy and crcativc frcedom. a vocabulary uncannily close to the Romantic languagc of thc sublime and to the Gennan ldcalisl prescntalion of the acsthclic as a space which might rcsisl the mechanical world of scicnlific me1hod an<l dcterminism. ls 1his rcturn of the sublime in lhc ncw U1opian language of scicncc simply lhe conscquence of lhc collapse of othcr kinds of U1opian discourse? Cerlainly. lhc post-1945 period has wilnessed the collapse of lhe Utopian discourses of socialism. counterculturalism. libcrtarianism or evcn of wclfare slatism. A generation of post-war writcrs and intellccluals

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expresscd a general rclreat frorn social or politi­cal Prornetheanism and novelisls sueh as Murdoch. Golding, Spark and Fowles ironically and me1afic1ionally framcd lhc hcroic pretcn­sions of their various cnchanter prolagonists with lhe explicit aim of exploring the dangcrous consequcnces of projecling heroic fictions omo life. Walter Benjamín 100 had argued that the projeclion of a decadent ae. theticism onto thc sphere of history had cremed lhe barbarous idea­lisms of Nazism. Auden 's 1963 essay 'The Poct and thc City' developed a similar argument. llowever, if such irony had seemed morally necessary during lhe fifties and sixties, il has come to seem aesthetically constraining for a new generalion of wrilers now. ls il surprising, lherefore. that there seems to be a growing ten­dency in 1he posl-sixties' gencration of writers and literary intellectuals (a generation often cynical about its parenls' dreams of erotic or political or cultural liberation) 10 turn toward lhe Utopian potential of the anti-materialist, indeter­minate, undeeidable new scienccs of the late twenlielh ccntury? For when Utopia does exist in 1his contemporary spacc. it seems 10 emerge out of the famastic worlds of cyberspace, or the idcalisations of the semiolic body in post-struc­turalist feminism. or the self-conscious experi­ments with relations bctween time and spacc in writers such as Calvino or Borges. So too, lhe newest cosmologies of science, anti-malerialist. beyond common sense. promise to assuage what Hardy called the ·ache of the modern', the Newlonian split between an alienated conscious­ncss and a blcakly mechanistic cosmos. They seduce wilh lhe l lcgclian promise of ultimate reconcilialion: of individual freedom with roo­tcdness in community, of change with penna­nence, ofrcring a horne bul not a prison for the 'nomad', 'hybrid'. 'migran!', ' vagabond' and all the other versions of the postmodern self.

lt might seem from this accounl, lherefore, that lhe most recent developmenls in science have not only healcd the quarrel betwecn the 'two cul­tures'. but ha ve al so eroded the classic dislinc­lions between 1he rnelhods and trulhs of science ami those of art. However. whal this ignores is the factthal science and art ha ve never exislcd in ncatly packaged realms of fact versus value.

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lndeed. science is never even simply narrativised within a cullure (as Lyotard argues). but has always been eominually mythologised. lls mctaphors have always taken on powerful cullu­ral lives of their own and, as we shall see, the construction of science within posunodcrn eullu­re is no exception. Since the scicntilic rcvolution of thc scventccnth ccnlllry. human beings havc fcll compelled lo seek their purposcs and valucs in scicnce and lo transfer omo what is elaimcd lo be a value-frcc discourse vocabularies more appropriatc 10 thc real ms of ethics or metaphy­sics. Biology. from Romamicism to thc ccology movcmcm. has bccn plundcred for metaphors of organicism and crcativity, physics for those of dcadly mcchanisation. exclusion and alicnation­and this in writers as diversc as Thomas Carlyle and D.H. Lawrcncc. In a rcvicw of 1930 of Joscph Nccdham's Thc Sccplical Biologist. William Empson, a writcr whose own poetry explores the proclaimcd 'qucerncss· of a univcr­se constantly transforming itself. obscrvcd that 'in the ninctcenth ccntury, one was only a pi le of billiard balls. jcrking about according to mathe­rnatical rules; scicntitic dctcrminism spclled horror and despair'! Wc cannot seem 10 acccpt that naturc is simply 'somcthing' which is 'taking its coursc', as Clov repcatedly tells llamm in 13eekeu's Endgame. but are driven 10

that eontinuous effon 10 'sublimate a disparity' which Robbe-Grillet names as our most absurd category crror.'0 Thc impulse gave Joyce his famous detinition of Cartesian and 1ewtonian man in the llhaca section of Ulysses: ·A cons­cious rational reagent between a micro- and a macrocosm ineluctably constructcd upon the inccrtitude of the void'. The idea of a mechanis­tic physics providcd for Victorians sueh as Carlylc, Arnold, Ruskin, Spcnscr and Mercdith an umbrella undcr which could be collccted most of thc cultural and social ills of the agc. and a convcnicnt rneans of rcformulating Christian debates about frecwill and dctcrminism in the secular vocabularics of modcrn scicnce. Similarly, the newest science, with its vocabu­lary of indeterminacy and undecidability rnight e ven begin 10 sound as if it had bcen invented by poststruclllralist intelleetuals seeking a new mimesis of the anti-mimetic. l low do wc evalua­te this kind of cullural myth-making?

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Apocalyptically-minded writers and erities, for example. have mincd thc older mcchanistic eon­cept of cntropy for their pessimistic projeetions of cullural decline (llerbert Spenser in the nine­teenth- and Freud in thc twentieth century) and so too havc a host of novelists from Beckeu 10

Pynchon lo Golding, yct scicntists protest and infonn us that entropy is a restrictive tcrm within science refcrring purely 10 the distribution of energy within thennally insulated systcrns (the lauer can hardly function as a dcscription of cul­lllres. history or cven the univcrse itsell). So is late twentieth century scienee. the new sublime of quanlllm physics, chaos ami catastrophe the­ory. superstrings and the likc. a potcntial basis for a genuinely Utopian reconciliation. a healing of thc 1 ewtonian and Cartesian wound, or is it just the lates! in a series of qucstionable cultural mythologisations whcre the realms of the acst­hctic amlthe scientilie are dangerously conllatcd in a kind of lin-de-sicclc soul sickness secking its cure in irrationalism and New Age mysti­cism? The new heavens. new earth, of contcm­porary eosmology ccnainly provide an interes­ting andas yct relativcly uncxplorcd twist lo the two cultures debate.

Al this point, 1 wish lo lcave behind, for a moment, the issue of the two cultures. but 1 would like al so to begin to develop some of thc implications for litcrature and litcrary criticism of the shifts in scientitic undcrstanding ami 10

examine in particular thc rclations between Modernism and Postmodernism within this fra­mework. Although modernist writing is oflen rcad through or related to ideas about rclativity and indeterminacy which arise out of the twcn­tieth century scientific revolution . most of it still cxprcsscs the scnse of a world still very much situated in the ewtonian frarne. lndced, the quotations above from Joyce and 13eckeu place their writing vcry much in the tradition of a modcrn heroism whieh emerges as a response lo scientilic determinism. ewtonian science had provided a worldpicture governed by the ecr­taillly of mechanical law. but which sccmed to offer no place within its materialist parametcrs for human consciousness. Equally Cartcsian rationalism provided a model of subjectivity where an introspcctivc conseiousncss ercatcs

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itself in isolation from the world around and dis­conneeted from its own body. The incertilUde of the void exprcssed by Joyce is the abyss which opens between the Cartesian subject and the

1ewtonian universe, and the great works of modernist literawre can be seen to continue an heroie strugglc to provide a bridge across this secmingly impossible spacc. an acsthetic strug­glc which is first named in philosophical tcrms in Kant's Third Critique. The gap betwccn cons­ciousncss and cosmos may be bridged more effectivcly through the sensuous embodiment of an than through the method of sciemific rationa­lism. Thc gap is, of course. the fundamental space of modern doubt, for the 'New Philosophy'. as John Donne acknowledged. pre­cise! y brings all in doubt: it gives birth to the real m of the why, of questions about value. pur­pose and meaning. lts literary expression has usually taken the fonn of a tragic humanism whieh haunts modernity and which is expressed in Ala in Robbe-Grillet ·s idea of the 'sublimation of a disparity': the desire to read our purposes into nature in what he regards as the rutile attempt to close the gap and assuage the existen­ti al Oread of disconncetion or Unhcimlichkeit. l t was perhaps Montaignc who first named the nature of such doubt in terms which would beco­me definitive of the modern condition. Doubt, in this sense. could be the only intclleetual equiva­len! to what he saw as the infinite possibility of things. and so. what is offered as cure must also be accepted as our disease. The state of restlcss and evcr-inquiring sccpticism is itself restcd on thc ground of a binding if hypothetical teleo­logy: for the Doubt whieh is modern (and which 1 would like to set against that Unccrtainty which secms to be dcfinitively po. tmodern) takes a pre-emptive form, a sccpticism which still sus­tains the bclief that it may lcad outside of itseH , toa view from Nowhere, to sufficient answcrs if not final truths.

How to reconcile consciousness and cosmos. how to live with a sense of the impossibility of overcoming the ·inccrtitudc of the void', but equally with a sense of the neeessity for eonti­nuation of the heroic struggle? These are charac­teristic questions and activities of the modern: of philosophy from Kant to Wittgenstein and of

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literawrc from Joyce lo Beckett. Virginia Woolf expressed a quintessentially modemist struggle to connect through the imagc of granite and rain­bow: 'lf we think of truth as something of grani­te-like solidity and of personality as something of rainbow-likc intelligibility ' . thcn. she conti ­nucs. thc task of welding thcmtogcthcr is a 'stiff onc' ." Truth. conccived as a rational form may also cxist as cmpirical bcing. Mr. Ramsay's 'think ofa kitchen table when you·re not there' : but truth may not simply be ·granite· for it may also exist as rainbow. as the play of subjectivc consciousness, as Lily's table with its texture of silvery bark and tishshaped lcavcs, its evoca­tions of lovely evenings with flamingo-likc clouds. " Tablcs. of coursc. have long servcd as excmpla in philosophical discussions of the pro­blcrn of knowlcdgc. but what is significan! in Woolf's portrayal is that the table should cxist sirnultaneously in both its granitc-likc and its rainbow-likc forms. Woolf is clcarly ambivalent about classic scicntists as shc is about realist phi­losophers. but she sees also that the classic rea­list conception of truth cannot simply be aban­doned in ordcr to capitulate in celcbratory mode to thc unccrtainty of rainbow impressionism or Bergsonian irrationalism. lndeed, though Woolf is often rcad as a Bergsonian in her reprcsenta­tion of subjective consciousncss. she could cqually be read through the framework of the Cambridge 1 ew Realism of Bcrtrand Russell and G.E. Moore, through what 1 have dcscribcd as a a modern attitudc of Doubt rathcr than a postrnodern stance of Uncertainty. Lily is a post­imprcssionist painter: the 'rainbow' vision actually expresses thc limits of a Patcrian impressionism which is also thc limit of ninetc­cnth century positivism. and the conception of 'granite' expresscs a notion of design closer to thc rationalist logic of the new Cambridge rea­lists. In fact. the tcrms ·vision ' and 'design' pro­vided the title for Rogcr Fry's influcntial book on Post-lmpressionism (writtcn for the sccond Post-lrnpressionism exhibition and publishcd in 1920). Fry's training in science and aesthetics allowed him to provide an importan! and intluential bridge bctween the worlds of scicnce and art. Vision a/1(1 Design pre ented the new Post-lmpressionism as an attempt to advance beyond the limitations or lmpressionism in its

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scarch to reeover a world of underlying fonn or design which might be reconnected to the world of immediate sensory imprcssion. Fry 's 'vision ' is analogous to Woolf 's 'rainbow' , his 'design' thc equivalen! of her 'granite'. Writing on Cczanne and other post-imprcssionist paintcrs, Fry argucd that 'thcse artists do not seek to givc what can, after all. be but a pale reflex of actual appcarance, but to arousc the conviction of a ncw and dcfinite reality. They do not seck to imi­tatc fonn. but to create form; not 10 imitatc life. but to find an equivalen! for life. By that 1 mean that they wish to make imagcs which by thc clc­arncss of their logical stmcture. and by their clo­sely-knit unity of texturc. shall appcal to our disintcrcsted and contemplative imagination with somcthing of the same vividncss as thc things of actual lifc appeal to our practica! acti­vities. In fact, they aim not at illusion but at rea­lity'.7 What sccms to emerge from this passage is that reality might only be intuited through thc clcarness of 'logical structure'. the 'disintercsted imagination' and the 'closely-knitunity of textu­rc': a description which is remarkably close to what is usually regarded as the allributes of the scientifie or the analytic mind.

Lily Briscoe struggles throughout Woolf's To The Lighrhouse with the allempt to reconcile 'granite' and 'rainbow'. As she sits on the lawn allempting to complete her painting after Mrs. Ramsay's death, 'visions ca me' , but 'there was something perhaps wrong with the design'. S he recogniscs the need to be 'on a level with ordi­nary expericnce' and at the same time to fecl 'its a miracle'! At precise! y this point in her medita­tions, the narrative perspective shirts toa passa­ge which articulates James's intuition of the lighthouse as a symbol of the potential reconci­liation of vision and dcsign. As always in Woolf. however, the moment of insight is flceting, and eludes thosc who pursue exclusively either one or other side of the dialectic: whether that of dcsign (in its rcductive form of gelling 10 leller R in the alphabet - which is how Mr. Ramsay des­cribes his work), or of visionas sirnply an undis­ciplined (ordinary) response to sensation and irnpression. The relation between granite and rainbow defies conceptual definition and we rnay therefore feel that it cannot cxist (the world

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is all that is the case). But maybe that is why art cxists: as a unique way of seeing and knowing 'this other thing, this truth, this reality, which suddenly laid hands on her'! The problem, of course, is how to reconcile these worlds? Lily's painting of the purple trianglc is an attempt to wcd the mathematical world of forrn or dcsign with the expcriential. temporal and impressio­nistic world of the ·ordinary mind'. Russell too agoniscd ovcr the problem- how to rcconcile the blcached out world of mathcmatical fonns with the colourful world of the transitory and thc impermancnt? More rccently, the American phi­losopher Thomas Nagel has dcscribed this as the problern conccrning the 'view frorn 1 owhere': how might one 'combine the perspective of a particular person insidc the world with an object vicw of that same world, the pcrson and the view included? lt is a problem that faces every creatu­re with the impulse and the capacity to transcend its particular point of view and 10 conceivc of the world as a whole'. '0 Nagel immcdiately rccogni­ses the ethical implications arising out of this epistemological problem. lf thc personal might be rcconcilcd with impcrsonality. the situatcd perspcctive with the view from nowhere, rain­bow with granite, thcn that drearn of rcconcilia­tion whieh has haunted modern writing as much as modern thought might in some way be reali­sed. Although Woolf might be ambivalent about scientists, she is surprisingly receptive to the possibility of exploring ways in which the cos­mic view of realist scicnce might be combined with the rainbow-likc and situated irnpressio­nism of the modern artist. She saw too, like 1 agcl. the cthical implications of such a project: Russell's logic and Moore's ethies suggcst why it might be more than simply an epistemological aim. for it might be as important ethically to attempt to conceive of the world without a sclf, as an impersonal cosmos, as it is to grasp the world through a particular condition of situated­ness within it. For Woolf. thc attempt to rcalise a 'view from nowhere' also reprcsents an impulse to move beyond egotistical perspectivism. In A Room of One :5 Own she obscrved that 'one began to get ti red of thc r and at the end of The Years, Peggy emphatically rejects the role of mirror to male egotism characteriscd by the familiar Wooll1an irnage of a bird's beak: 'Shc

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had heard it all befo re, 1, 1, 1, - he went on. lt was like a vulture's beak pccking ora vacuum clea­ner sucking. ora telephonc bell ringing. 1, l. l. But he can ' t help it, not with that nerve-drawn egotist's face, shc thought. glaneing at him' '' The dark bar of the '1' which threatcns ever to cast its shadow across the writer's page might be dispclled by a more cosmic pcrspective which offcrs release from egotism without capitulation to or sense of absorption in an indifferent nature. The wandering egoless '1' of 'Strcct Haunting' becomes thc model of a cosmic and nomadic self which. like Mrs. Ramsay's core of darkness. is free to roam to the limits of horizons. to escape that necessity for social articulation which cither lixes the personality like a lish caught in thc tides or impcls it to rctrcat into a prívate spacc (once described by Elainc Showalter as the room of one's own which is thc grave). To attempt to articulate granite and rainbow involves the cthi­cal imperative to transcend thc narrow limits of egotism and to acknowlcdge the immensc stran­geness of the universe outside of the self. What is pcrceived as tragic alienation might also be viewed as heroic altruism (and 1 would argue that this as true in the writing of most modcr­nists, of Joyce, Beckctt, Manslield, for examplc, as it is of Woolf herscll). In this scnsc, and to borrow a phrasc from Paul de Man, both modern art and sciencc partakc of a continuous impulse which is the ncccssary and knowing dcfcat of knowledge.

Perhaps the modernist writer who, more than any other, spent his life struggling with this pain­ful modern condition of Doubt, with the effort to reeoncilc consciousness and cosmos, to arrive at a position outside of consciousness which might al so contain consciousness, was Samucl Beekett. From his earliest writings, Bcckett's work con­fronts the logic of the Cartesian and 1ewtonian world orders: articulating a series of tortured consciousncsses split off from that dcfcctive machine which is the human body and longing to rctreat into a closed world of pure rational or aesthctic order whieh might subsume naturc through mind into the shapc of a pcrfect Platonic circle. His characters revcl in a priori games and mueh of thc comed y is derived from the disjune­tion between the intensity of their pursuit ami thc

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futility of their impon: the round songs, hat games, cndlcss and circular gcncalogics, repeti­tious pcrambulations and permutations and com­binations of numbers. Beckett again and again satirises thc Cartesian project, revcals how the eiTort to eliminate all sensory and affective expe­rience in order to discover truth through purc rationality. as pure geomctric fonn, produces only that tortured solipsism which is his image of human consciousness trappcd in the n1sting garbage can of its own material form. Like Woolf, his projcct too. was to lind a fonn in which to 'accommodate the mess'. to reconcile consciousness and cosmos, to lind a way out of the prison of cncloscd logic. In search of it, he managcs to satirisc most of thc grcat metaphysi­cal systcms of Wcstcrn philosophy and as early as 1931 , in thc essay on Proust, he urged the artist to confront the dfnicult task of describing thc object 'perceivcd as particular and unique and not mcrcly thc membcr of a family ... dcta­ched from the sanity of a cause, isolated and inexplicable in the light of ignorance, then and only thcn rnight it be a source of cnchantment'. " Though Beckett's characters often retreat into systems of closed intelligibility, Beekctt himsclf cannot givc up the seareh for correspondencc, the desire to rcconnect subject and object and the stmggle is articulated through the perpetua! aest­hctic negation of closcd systems, through a per­sistently modcrn Doubt rathcr than investment in a postmodern Unccrtainty which would counsel the renuneiation altogcther of such a quest. It is thc condition of Doubt which is so Iyrically arti­culated by Molloy as he lies helplcss in the diteh, and which al so stands as Beckett 's refusal of any Utopian reading of the New Science: 'whcn aire­ad y all was fading, waves and partieules. there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thinglcss names. 1 say that now, but after all what do 1 know about them. now whcn the icy words hail down upon me. thc iey mea­nings, all the world dies too, foully named. All 1 know is what the words know. and thc dead things, and that makes a handsome liule sum, with a beginning, a middle and an end as in the wcllbuilt phrase and the long sonata of the dead'.l9

This thcn is modern Doubt. sceptieal. searching,

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yearning to break out of linguistic self-rellexi­vity. pre-emptive, ancl in the fonns which it takes in modernist writing, heroic. but rarely celebra­tory. lf we turn now to Postmodernism. however, we shall see a shift away from such painful but hopeful scepticism toward a paradoxieally joyous nihilism. Post- ewtonian science is appropriated in the elaboration of a new. post­modern Uncertainty which is now claimed to be the groundless ground of everything and which oiTers to close the incertitudc of the void. to overcome the separalion of subject and objcct, to oiTer a Utopian space which will climinate fore­ver the modern anxious condition of Doubt. Here Uncertainty replaces pre-emptive doubt for it is a condition which cannot be overcome, a new Life principie with nothing outside of itself and thus with no outside whatsoever. To aecept the condition is to be liberated from anxiety. for if Uncertainty is the bcginning and end of all things and all matter. then in this proposition itsclf lies the longed for reconciliation between consciousness and nature. lf the deterministie eertaintics of modern science led to the painful condition of modern Doubt. then the fundamen­tal Uncertainty of postmodern New Seienee pro­duces consolation anda paradoxical kind of ccr­tainty. Uncannily like 1he poslslrucluralist texl, the cosmos itself would now seem to exist in a fundamental and perpetua! condition of di fféran­ce.

In the postmodern extension of Heisenbergian Uncertainly, it would seem lhat Cartesian dua­lism mighl be effaced anda release offcred from lhe lreadmill of ewlonian determinism. Consciousness may be seen 10 be reconcilcd with matter. indeed inseparable from it. facl wilh value, and subjeet wilh object. l t is nol surpri­sing. therefore, that postmodern theory has borrowed heavily from lhe vocabularies of ew Science with its eoneepts of undeeidability. uncertainty, complementarity, discontinuity, constmctivism, indeterminacy, language games and possible worlds. Postmoclernism was announced with Lyotard's 'report on knowledge' of 1979, and The Postmodem Condirion effecti­vely updated the two cultures debate by exami­ning the latest standing of science in relation to acsthetic form, and in particular, the expressive

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dependency of scientists on mudes of narrative: 'scientific knowledge cannot know and make known thal it is lhe true knowlcdge without rcsorting to lhe Olher. narrativc kind of knowlcd­ge. which from its point of vicw is no knowled­ge at all. Without such reeourse il would be in a posilion of presupposing ils own validity and would be slooping to whal il condemns .. . But does il nol fall into the same trap by using narra­ti ve as its authorily'>' "' One of Lyotard's aims here was 10 demonslralc lhal the realist epistemc is atan end and with it the rule of classical scien­ce which was now unable to providc legilima­ting grounds for all those 'grand narrativc ' of Enlightenmentthereby declared lo be exhausted. Curiously though, givcn the premisc that the pos1modcrn condition is the consequence of a crisis inthe legitimation of scicntific knowlcdgc, it could be argued that Lyotard contradictorily or pcrhaps sneakily introduces into his argumenl an cffectivc legitimation of his own position by its rnediation through the vocabulary and concep­tual apparatus of New rather than Old Science. Science is still lhe master narralive, lhough now in postmodern rather lhan modcrn shape. Lyotard cons1ruc1s what is effectivcly his own grand narrative of lhe contemporary condition and how wc arrived at it whilst denying the vali­dity of foundationalist knowledge claims and, in later works such as The Differend ( 1988), e ven 1he ethical dcsirability of continued belief in grand narrativcs: for in the absenec of an overar­ching me1anarra1ivc which would provide the legitirnating grounds for all first order knowled­gc claims. only a provisional and local, shifting, pragmatic and nominalist approach to questions of justice may avoid tolalilarian exclusion.

Postmodernists havc clcvcloped a nurnber of claims predicatcd upon somc version of Lyotard's argumcnt. Thcse include. onc: the claim that epistemology and ontology are now indistinguishable, for lhere can be no object of knowledge which exisls outside of a particular discursivc framcwork of knowledge; henec, two: there can be no empirical verificalion of a the­ory, simply intelligibility within the terms of par­ticular frarncs of knowlcdge, and thrce: truth and fiction are indislinguishable, for it must follow that there are no fundamental differcnecs betwc-

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en the fictions of the literary imagination and those of the philosopher or mathcmatician. Convcniently. Lyotard evcn finds an appropriate vocabulary for the development of his argument in the writings of the practitioners and theorists of the ew Scicnce. which he announces to be exdusivcly conccrned with ·undecidablcs. thc limits of precise control, contlicts characteriscd by incomplcte information; fracta, calastrophcs. and pragmatic paradoxcs'. Accordingly, Ncw Scicnce has pulled the carpct from undcr

cwtonian mcchanics, and scicntilic knowlcdgc has now bccn dcclarcd as 'discontinuous. catas­trophic, non-rectifiablc and paradoxical'."

As 1 suggcstcd carlicr. however. thc postmodcrn condition of Unccrtainty bcgins to sound suspi­ciously rcassuring: if scicnce can no longcr offcr certain knowlcdge cvcn in thc sphcrc of thc mcchanical and physical, then Doubt, that pain­ful modcrn condition which arosc from the ancmpt to closc thc gap bctwccn consciousncss and cosmos, to aspire lo a vicw from Nowhcrc, clcarly bccomcs rcdundant: simply thc sclf­rctlcx ivc mctadiscoursc of onc particular lan­guagc gamc amongst many. All knowlcdgc claims are now seen 10 be intcrnalto thc spccific proces of enquiry and intclligible only with rcfercnce to thc particular framcwork of each language gamc. Yet again, although Lyotard sug­gests that no language gamc can clairn to be more 'truc' than anothcr, he is guilty, as we ha ve sccn, of at lcast implying that thc paradigms of thc New Sciencc are more prcfcrable than those of classical science for legitimating his particu­lar version of the postmodcrn condition. l f the Newtonian cosmos did not seem to accommoda­tc our desircs and imaginations, then we can now find reconciliation, once wc rccognise that it was only evcr thc working out of a particular enclo­sed logic -one possible language game arnongst many- within thc postrnodern reading of the paradigms of the New Science. As reality is, in this mode (and by dclinition) always awaiting cornplction and construction, then Uncertainty becomcs the new principie of lifc and (as appa­rently confirmed in Bohr's Copenhagen lnterpretation of the Uneertainty Principie) not simply the consequence of temporary limits to our powers of observation. naming or rational

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undcrstanding (which would preserve a realist position).

What might be sorne broad implications for lite­rary criticism of assent 10 this cpistemological shift?

l . \Ve can only tal k about intelligibility or value within the rules or terms of a given system: thus. it is pointlcss (ami wrong) to assumc that we can criticisc onc language game from within the tcrms of anothcr (thc incommcnsurability thc­sis). Wc cannot compare various readings of a text and say that onc is bcucr or more true lhan anothcr. only thal onc might be more auractive, idcologically preferrablc or in accord with our own cthical or cpistcmological orientations than available others. ·Good' now bccorncs what rctlccts our own personal intcrcsts or thosc of thc group to which wc considcr ourselvcs to bclong. Uncertainty collapses into emotivism or some fonn of sensus communis.

2. A language gamc thereforc givcs us more knowledgc of itsclf than of the world or thc text-1 ewtonian rncchanics providcs us with onc kind of world and its rules bccome inopcrative and ineffcetual in thc world provided by the diseour­ses of quantum physics. Truth may only be rcla­tive to the thcory through whieh it is constructed and articulatcd.

3. lf you cannol clairn that your system is tme. thcn you can hardly believc in it. though you can 'privilege' it bccause it produces an intercsting or formally satisfying account of things. Moreovcr, those who believc in their systems are impcrialists who suppress thc tnllh-effects of other systems.

4. l f we cannot recognise one language game from within thc terms of anothcr, then neither can we offer judgement on it. This used to be called rclativism or nihilism in its strongcr form. Once we recognise it 10 be Unccnainty, howe­ver. we are dclivered from the anxicty of choo­sing bctwcen what appear to be incommensura­blc validity clairns.

S. We should, howevcr, continuc to try lo reeog-

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nise the terms of another language game or the existence of allernative 'possible worlds'. lf such worlds are radically incommensurablc though. it is poimless trying lo achieve this through rational enquiry. reasoned debate or empírica! testing or observation: hence the post­modern invocation of the sublime. as that 'other· which is otnside of representa! ion. available only through the experience of a momemary epip­hany or inthe linguistic disruptions of the avant­garde texl. The 'Other' thus comes lo exisl asan abstract category usually appearing in post­Saussurean criticism as a relation of diffcrence with no positive tenns. ll is no good believing that you can arrive at it through old-fashioned humanisl empathy because this is lo fall into the greatesl solipsistic error of all. /\s soon as the ·other· is embodied as a living. brcathing entny ( in thc way that you most likcly experience yourselt). then this embodied other of humanism must be a projection of your own values and sel fpreoecupations.

So. no belief. no knowlcdge for which lo strive. no possibility of empathy?

So mueh for postmodern criticism and its appro­priation of the ew Science. To proceed cau­tiously therein would seem, al the very lcast. lo be the recommendation arising from this discus­sion. Whatthen of litermure itselt'? So far. 1 seem to have offered a somewhal negative accoulll of thc rclations between shifls in seience and those in the epistemologies of literary criticism. More positivcly. however. it would seemthatthe voca­bularies. visions ancl ideas of the J ew Science have stimulated an importan! and invigorated 'famastic' turn in literature itself. in writing by magic realists such as Marquez. metafictionists such as llalo Calvino and Martín Amis. late modernists such as William Golding, post-colo­nial writers such as Salman Rushdie and fabu­lists such as Angela Carter and Jeanetle Wimerson. More effectively than in literary cri-

ticism, works of litemry liction (and 1 do wish to preserve the disunction) can. as Shakespeare put it, give lo the imagination a place and habitation. Possible worlds, the radically heterogeneous, the 'other' can most effectivcly disturb our seuled modes of thought and unconscious prejudices when they are embodied. lleshed out. made avai· Jable for recognition and empathy. Only given such fonn can they linger on. continuing lo dis­turb the familiar. leaving unresolved the implica­tions of that disturbance in the true spiril of the Kantian sublime. Surely liction has always exis· ted as a space for trial without the consequences of error. for cognitive estrangemenl without the burden of sciemilic proof'? Within the wolds of unaginauve f1cl1on. 1dcas are embodicd in ways which challcngc us lo rethink tired and familiar categorics ami. as Kalll rccogmsed. 1n ways that actually articulatc what had nevcr existed befo­re. lt scems lo me that therc is an imponant dis­tinction lo be drawn between a cosmic Utopía constructed self-consciously as a '1 o-place" though dcriving its inspiration from actual scicn­tilic investigation, and a Utopian postmodern criticisrn which uses similar ideas lo make knowlcdge claims about the literary text or the world outsidc. Perhaps this is why 1 fcel happier with the magic realisms of postmodern fiction and the speculative mirrors which they hold up to the world-building aetivities or science. Surely it is in thc end simply inappropriate lO se ver criticism as an acti vity from the identity of Enlightenment itself. orto argue in the name of a postmodcrn knowlcdge that knowledgc itself, as conceived within the terms of thal Enlightenment project, is now atan end. Perhaps we should rcmain suspended bctween modern Doubt and postmodern Uncertainty, for, as Virginia Woolf suggestcd in her cssay on modcm fiction. however hard we tre, and 'whet­her we call it lifc or spirit. tnnh or reality. this. the essential thing. has moved off, or on, and refuses lo be contained any longcr in such ill-fil­ting vestmcnts as we providc' ."

Eugcn Jolas. 'Thc Rcvoluuon of Languagc and James Joycc'. in Otrri~W~IItrllalioll Rmuulllis Faclijic¡Ciiotr Jor lncaminalilm of \~1rk in Pm~res., (London: Fabcr. 1972). p.80.

2 Max Planck. \VIrere is Scietrce Coi u~?. tr. James Murphy (London: Gcorgc.:. Al len and Unwin. 1933).

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1 John Carey. The Fa!Jer /Jook o{Sne11n: (London : Fabcr). pp.xtx·.XXV. 4 C.P. Snow. The 7im Cultures. tntrod . Stcfan Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge Univcr:;ity Prcss. 199:1). p.9&. ) Octavio Paz. Tlu: Othl'l' \l¡m·t'' l'ot'fn· ami the ¡:¡,.!)e.Siede (1\l:mchcstcr: 1\l:mchcstcr Univct>ity Prcss.

1992). ¡>. 158. 6 Wcrncr llciscnbcrg. quotcd 111 Karl Popper. The Philo.wphical Principlrs of the Qutt/1111111 111rory (London.

1930). pp.40·41. 7 Ncils Bohr. in Karl Popper. Quanlltm '111eory amlthe Schism in Physics (London. 1982). p.40. S Wcrncr llciscnbcrg. Phy.<ic.•· ttll(l/'hilosophy (Harmondswonh. 1990). p. SO. 9 William Empson. AlguifyinJ.!: l:ssays in l.itertuure ami Culture. cd. John llaffcndcn (London. 1987). p.528. 10 Alain Robbc·Grillct. Snapslrots am11im'tlrds a Ne•r Nm·el. trans. Barbara Wright (London. 1965). p.8J. 11 Virginia Woolf. Rogcr Fry: A /Jiography (London: Hoganh Prcss. 1940). p. l49. 12 Virginia Woolf. 'li1 The l.tJ.!hthouse (London: lloganh Prcss. 1960). p.40. 13 Rogcr Fry. Visio11 a JI(/ Design (Oxford: O.xford Univcrsity l'rcss. 19::11 ). p. l67 . 14 '!i1 The Lightlrouse. pp.296·97. 15 lbtd. p.236. 16 Thomas Nagcl. The Viell'fmm Nm•·iu're (Oxford: Oxford Univcr:;ity l'n:ss. 1986). p.3. 17 Virginia Woolf. A Room of One :,· Ou·n (London: llogarth Prcss. 1928). p. ll5: '11u' >'ears (London: Pan.

1948). pp.272· 73 . 1 S Samucl Bcckclt. l'mu.1·t all(/ Three Oialogues \Vith (ieorge.< Dutlwll (London : C:~ldcr. 1959). pp.22·23. 19 Samucl Bcckcll. "Molloy". 111 '111<' 'Ji·i/ogy (London: Caldcr. 1965). p.31 . 20 Jc:m· f'rancois Lyotard. The l'o.\·tmodem Cmulitwn: A Ue¡wrt 011 Kll(m·ledge (Manchcstcr: 1\lanchcstcr

Univcrsity l'rcss). p.29. 21 lbid. p.60. 22 Virginia Woolf. "Modcrn f'iction". Collecred /:'s.wys. vol. 2 (London: Hogarth l'rcss. 1966). p.l 05.

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