B.A., M.A. (Cologne, Germany), Ph.D. (Trent & Cologne, Germany)
Dissertation: All Things Fusible: Media, Science, and Mythology in the Fiction of Neal Stephenson
Examining Committee:
Veronica Hollinger (Co-Supervisor) & Hanjo Berressem (Cologne) (Co-Supervisor), David Holdsworth, and Ihor Junyk
External Examiner: Colin Milburn, University of California, Davis
Internal Examiner: Nicolas Pethes (Cologne)
Chair: Jonathan Bordo
Abstract
This dissertation presents the work of the American science fiction author Neal Stephenson as a case study of the mediations between literature and science by mobilizing its resonances with contemporary science studies and media theory. Tracing the historical and thematic trajectory of his consecutively published novels Snow Crash (1992), The Diamond Age; or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (1995), Cryptonomicon (1999), Quicksilver: The Baroque Cycle I (2003), The Confusion: The Baroque Cycle II (2004), and The System of the World: The Baroque Cycle III (2004), it approaches Stephenson’s fiction as an archaeology of the deep history of science that leads from late twentieth-century cyberculture, to world-war-two cryptography, and the seventeenthcentury rise of the Royal Society. Refracted through a parallel reading of Stephenson’s novels and the theoretical work of Michel Serres, Bruno Latour, Friedrich A. Kittler, Isabelle Stengers, Donna Haraway, and others, this dissertation offers in-depth discussions of the relations among cybernetics, complexity theory, information theory, systems theory, Leibnizian metaphysics, Newtonian alchemy, and fluid dynamics. Recognizing these hybrid fields as central to contemporary dialogues between the natural sciences and the humanities, Stephenson’s work is shown to exhibit a consistent engagement with the feedback loops among physical, artistic, narratological, and epistemological processes of innovation and emergence. Through his portrayal of hackers, mathematicians, natural philosophers, alchemists, vagabonds, and couriers as permutations of trickster figures, this dissertation advances a generalized notion of boundary transgressions and media infrastructures to illustrate how newness emerges by way of the turbulent con-fusion of disciplines, genres, knowledge systems, historical linearities, and physical environments. Uninterested in rigid genre boundaries, Stephenson’s novels are explored through the links among artistic modes that range from cyberpunk, to hard science fiction, historiographic metafiction, the carnivalesque, and the baroque. In a metabolization of the work performed by science studies, Stephenson’s fiction foregrounds that scientific practice is always intimately entangled in narrative, politics, metaphor, myth, and the circulation of a multiplicity of human and nonhuman agents. As the first sustained analysis of this segment of Stephenson’s work, this dissertation offers a contribution to both science fiction studies and the wider field of literature and science.
Dr. Moritz Ingwersen
Contact: moritzingwersen@trentu.ca
Moritz Ingwersen completed his Doctoral Degree in Cultural Studies under a joint PhD agreement with the University of Cologne. He is a recipient of the Ontario Trillium Scholarship and was awarded the Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal. Currently, he works as an assistant professor of North American Literature and Culture at the University of Konstanz and teaches courses in media theory at the University of Arts Bremen.
Trent media:
The Best of Both Worlds: Dr. Moritz Ingwersen First Trent Student to Graduate with a Cotutelle
Dr. Moritz Ingwersen has become the first Trent student to complete a Cotutelle — earning a single Ph.D. from two universities – Trent and the University of Cologne.