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Topics
for seminar discussion
1 Husserls
idea of Lebenswelt (Life-world): "science is a human spiritual
accomplishment which presupposes as its point of departure ... the
intuitive surrounding world of life, pregiven as existing for all in
common." (The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology, 1936/54))
We can use the
notion of Life-world as a way of understanding what fictional narratives
in the sf genre do when they invent imaginary world-systems: each a
totality comprising linked features which activate & deploy human
energies in specific ways to create, sustain and change specific
institutions through which the life of individuals and societies is
lived in the physical world.
Link:
Literary Encyclopedia
Link:
Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
"Husserl's notion of
lifeworld is a difficult (and at the same time important) one. It
can roughly be thought of in two different (but arguably compatible)
ways: (1) in terms of belief and (2) in terms of something like
socially, culturally or evolutionarily established (but nevertheless
abstract) sense or meaning.
(1) If we restrict
ourselves to a single subject of experience, the lifeworld can be
looked upon as the rational structure underlying his (or her)
"natural attitude". That is to say: a given subject's lifeworld
consists of the beliefs against which his everyday attitude towards
himself, the objective world and others receive their ultimate
justification. (However, in principle not even beliefs forming part
of a subject's lifeworld are immune to revision. Hence, Husserl must
not be regarded as an epistemological foundationalist...
(2a) If we consider a
single community of subjects, their common lifeworld, or "homeworld",
can be looked upon, by first approximation, as the system of senses
or meanings constituting their common language, or "form of life"
(Wittgenstein), given that they conceive of the world and themselves
in the categories provided by this language.
(2b) If we consider
subjects belonging to different communities, we can look upon their
common lifeworld as the general framework, or "a priori structure",
of senses or meanings that allows for the mutual translation of
their respective languages (with their different associated "homeworlds")
into one another."
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LIFE-WORLD - FEATURES/PROPERTIES:
Outer world of nature: astronomical ecological biological
Inner world of the individual & interpersonal relations:
psychological/psychic - social sexual/fraternal/familial
Outer social world: communal - cultural spiritual/religious -
political juridical
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Novelist
Dominant idea
Changes in the Life-world
Miller
the human will to knowledge
transformations in the "life-world"; mutations in life forms
Burgess
freedom/control
coercive violence by & to the individual
Dick alternative
history
(if Japan had won World War II)
Ursula Le Guin An
alternative biology
(if the human experience had feminine and masculine experiences built
into it)
Atwood a
world changed by pollution
how social and sexual relations would alter
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The plot of each
novel in a dystopian narrative can be described (without too much
over-simplification) as a dialectical progression:
Freedom
Control Consequence
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We could think of
each speculative/SF fictional world as the answer to an immanent
question (i.e. a question latent rather than manifest), or a specific
resolution to a problem that has more than one resolution, such that the
reading of the novel can be made to indicate what the question or
problem might be. To infer that question or problem is to get a hold on
the likely reasons why a creative imagination creates a specific kind of
"life-world".
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(more to follow) |