Graduation Semester and Year

2014

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in English

Department

English

First Advisor

James E. Warren

Abstract

As street politics began to operate academically after the civil rights eras, academic turns toward socio-constructive theories dominated critical philosophies of the subsequent eighties and nineties (especially in the West). This paper examines the linguistic turn in light of a New Digital World Millennium that is the continuation of the Rise of Science that emerged in the 17th century. Material voices that were overshadowed by linguistic or terministically-centered philosophies are today more than ever emergent through tool use. The wireless revolution of the late 19th century has today created technological tools at hand that are deeply impressing the human being-in-the-world, rapidly shaking up the place of homo sapiens in the cosmos. Robotic technologies today have the capacity to taste fine wine and food, disseminate information by hive-minds, fuse with our material flesh, and have taken on faculties of speech and learning. Humans are the makers of such tools and all of them are made to overcome material constraint. Considering such rapid technological innovation and new material interlocutions, I argue that a return to the beginnings of the Academy is necessary because they had already always acknowledged material voice and mystical (oracular/prophetic/irrational) impressions until the rise of Socratism. A return to the tools left behind by Science is necessary because it is the method by which to access (speak about) such mystical machinations brought forth through material tool use. This paper will revisit ancient methods with a new eye to the constraints of the material world and the tools used to overcome them.

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | English Language and Literature

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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