From Chaos to Catastrophe?: Texts and the Transitionality of the Mind

Description

This book focuses on the tensions between processes of consciousness and their products like worldviews, theories, models of thought etc. Staying close to their technical meanings in chaos and catastrophe theory, chaotic processes are described in mainly neurobiological and evolutionary terms while products are delineated in their evolutionary logic. Given both a relative opacity of processes of the mind and of the outside world, the dramatic quality of the processes, a certain closeness to ‘hysterical’ and ‘schizophrenic’ tendencies and, within the context of the weakening orientating power of worldviews, an alarming catastrophic potential emerge. As a consequence, the book aims at a comparative cost-benefit analysis of the transitionality between ‘chaotic’ processes of consciousness and the often ‘catastrophic’ implications of their products within historical frameworks. The central thesis consists in the increasing failure in the orientation of action which cannot be contained by systems of ethics. Materials for this analysis are mainly drawn from texts normally called literary in which the tension between biographical and historical dimensions provides profiles of chaos and catastrophe. Foreword Contents Introduction: Processes and Products: Claims, Goals, Risks Part I. Consciousness Studies: Neurosciences and ‘Literature’ 1. The Transitionality of Consciousness 2. Universalism vs. Particularism 3. Patterns of Consciousness, Language, Discourse 4. James, James and the Structure of Fluctuations 5. Neurobiology: Intricacies and Implications 6. Dramatic Narratives 7. Transitionality and the Obsession with Form 8. Existential Impressionism and Cultural Status: Dorothy Richardson (1873–1957) 9. An Interlude, Or, From Richardson to Richardson Part II. Consciousness and History: Biographical ‘Novels’ and their ‘Liberal’ Extensions 1. Biography on the Rebound 2. Biographical Patterns, Models of Consciousness and Historical Significance in Dickens 3. Diagnostic Power and Practical Relevance: Some Further Steps 4. The Pseudo-Freedom of Consciousness and its Cost-Benefit Analysis in the Twentieth Century 5. The RAF, a Twentieth-Century Reality Shift, and a Contemporary German ‘Novel’ 6. The Drama of ‘Liberalism’ 7. What Does Enlightenment Enlighten Us About? 8. The Paradox of Liberty and Authority Part III. A Case Study: Chaotic Consciousness and Catastrophic History, Discordant Evolution and Political Overreaction: Oswald and Nicholas Mosley 1. Catastrophe Practice: Frameworks and Presuppositions ‒ From Individuality to Scripts 2. Catastrophe Practice: Routines ‒ Individuality Manufactured and Medialized 3. Hopeful Monsters: Discordant Evolution and Steps towards Mutation 4. Hysterical Consciousness and the Beginnings of Institutional Degeneration in Autobiographical Writings 5. The Failure of Rules and the Unleashing of Hysterical Consciousness: Oswald Mosley and Fascism 6. Tentative Conclusions Works Cited Index