Ontological Instability Research Articles

"Śniło mu się, że nie spał”: Ontologiczna niestabilność w powieści Jamesa Robertsona "The Fanatic"

Set in the seventeenth and late twentieth centuries, James Robertson’s first novel The Fanatic (2000) is not only a powerful exploration of Scottish history and the interrelationships between past and present, but also an example of historical metafiction, concerned with the nature of historical and fictional reconstructions. As this article argues, the world model created in The Fanatic is characterized by inherent epistemological and ontological instability, visible at all levels of the text’s construction. The two plot lines, the seventeenth century past and the twentieth century present, initially set apart, increasingly blur and permeate each other until finally it is impossible to tell what is past and what is present, what is “real” and what re-constructed or imagined. The ontological status of the narrated events is equally unstable, as they often turn out to be false memories, hallucinations or delusions of the characters, while the fictionality of the characters is foregrounded by means of intertextual allusions. Finally, the status and reliability of the seemingly objective, heterodiegetic narrator becomes increasingly questionable as the story unfolds. Far from despairing of the possibility of offering a reliable historical reconstruction; however, the novel celebrates the very instability, which allows for constant imaginative reinterpretation and renewal of the past in the present, and of reality in fiction.

Worlds Falling Apart: Human and Nonhuman in Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods

Abstract This essay discusses Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods (2007) in light of human and nonhuman relationships. The author presents us with quite a paradoxical situation, whereby what is human seems to be less human than what is said to be nonhuman. The ontological instability produced by such a peculiar paradigm generates interesting consequences in terms of fundamental rights, especially when applied to hybrid forms of life such as those represented by “Robo sapiens.” Hence, Winterson’s novel invites a reconfiguration of the notion of rights and “legal personhood” in the context of AI systems. Robots demand that their “humanity” is acknowledged and, as a consequence to that, they also demand that they are granted rights. One could notice that Robot’s existential condition is very similar to that of slaves, precisely like slaves they are submitted to servitude, forced or bonded labour. And yet the fact that they are not “fully human”, only very similar or close to them, puts robots in a juridical position that might be compared to that of animals and the way they are presented in animal law studies.

Who Discovered the Unknown Land? (The Double Motivation Device in the Works of F. K. Sologub and V. V. Nabokov)

The subject of the study in this article is the Sologubov pretexts of V. V. Nabokov's stories "Terra Incognita" and "In Memory of L. I. Shigaev". The paper establishes the genetic connection of these works with the stories "Summoning the Beast" and "Connecting souls" by F. K. Sologub. The work is based on comparative analysis, which helps to identify the commonality of the plots and techniques of the writers, to establish the features of the worldview that lead to a similar choice. The area of Nabokov's artistic attention, like Sologub, is a state of delirium, which motivates the bifurcation of space. An indication of the Sologubov intertext in Nabokov is the image of small domestic evil spirits, textually close to the descriptions of the predecessor. The article proves that the borrowing of plots is due to the aesthetic community of artists: the desire to recreate the twofold world by combining the objective plan with the image of an alternative – subjective or metaphysical – dimension. Ontological instability is recreated by writers using the technique of double motivation. The article examines the attempts of both authors to transform the technique found in prose for drama. Sologub implements them in the unfinished adaptation for the scene of the story "Summoning the Beast" and in the play "The Little Demon". Nabokov seeks to convey the point of view of the hero in the plays "Death", "Event", "The Invention of the Waltz". It is noted that in the field of drama, common attitudes find a dissimilar implementation at the level of techniques.

“Shadowtime”

AbstractThis paper explores “shadowtime”, or the co-existence of multiple temporalities, in Michelle Paver’s novelDark Matter: A Ghost Story(2010).Dark Matteris filled with temporally strange figures that evade human vision and understanding. Central among these is the spectral presence of agengånger, or ghost, which haunts the Arctic research station where the novel is largely set. After tracking some of the metaphorical and material dimensions of the spectral, this essay investigates “shadowtime” in the context of the novel’s various ‘archives’. It then looks at how the incorporeal or immaterial concepts of value and choice frame the novel’s ‘dark matters’. ‘Possibility’, or the question of ‘what if?’ pervades the novel’s pages, encouraging readers to imagine multiple realities simultaneously. This essay argues that, although set in a period predating wide awareness of climate change,Dark Matter’s “shadowtimes” create forms of temporal and ontological instability that resonate with the existential uncertainties of the Anthropocene.

God and Self in Confessiones IV and Beyond: Therapeia, Self-Presence, and Ontological Contingency in Augustine, Seneca, and Heidegger

This article investigates Augustine’s reflection on the death of his friend in Confessiones IV. A critical treatment of this passage discloses the three key themes which will form the main substance of the analysis: self-presence, the contingency of being, and divine absence. Integrating philosophical and theological methodologies with an historical-critical treatment of Augustine’s work, this article relates Augustine’s insights to his foregoing classical context and his reception in posterity, with particular attention to Lucius Annaeus Seneca (ca. 4 BCE-65 CE) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). This investigation shows that these three figures are connected by an appreciation of how self-presence and ontological instability are constant facets of human life, though easily neglected. Each advocates a curriculum of philosophical training, whereby one learns to pacify the mind by an awareness of the true nature of mundane reality. This research contributes to the renewed appreciation of how the therapeutic aspects of classical philosophy influenced early Christian authors; illuminates a key episode in Augustine’s life en route to his conversion to Christianity; and raises questions about the “apophatic” dimensions of Augustine’s theology and anthropology.

Multiplicity and ontological instability in nonhuman hearts

Resumo O artigo reflete sobre as relações entre corpos biológicos e artefatos tecnológicos, a partir da pesquisa etnográfica sobre o desenvolvimento de tecnologias de assistência circulatória, conhecidas como corações artificiais. Para compreender as corporeidades que tais dispositivos mecânicos ajudam a produzir, buscamos aqui caracterizar dois tipos de corpos instituídos a partir de práticas médicas e biotecnologias projetadas para pacientes com insuficiência cardíaca avançada. Os corpos imunológicos, produzidos a partir dos transplantes de coração, serão contrastados aos corpos biônicos, compostos pelo arranjo com corações artificiais. Propomos que é preciso considerar que cada uma dessas tecnologias se coproduz com distintas naturezas, sustentadas em materialidades, práticas, moralidades e pressupostos específicos. A atenção dada às práticas e à materialidade permitirá destacar os diversos entrelaçamentos materiais-semióticos. Resgatar a trajetória de desenvolvimento desse campo nos permitirá explorar o imaginário a partir do qual tais intervenções emergem, assim como as transformações ocorridas, ressaltando o vínculo ao corpo-máquina tecido no âmbito biomédico.

ПИТАННЯ ОНТОЛОГІЧНОЇ РІВНОВАГИ СУЩОГО У ХРИСТИЯНСЬКІЙ ТЕОЛОГІЇ

The article is a brief overview of the views of modern Christian theologians on the question of the contingency of being and ways to preserve and maintain the ontological balance of God. The context of philosophical understanding of problems is the philosophy of religion and ontology. The author tries to show that, according to religious intellectuals, it is the contingency of the world, its subtle ontological structure and the existing danger of its return to non-existence that are completely eliminated by God's providence. The providence of God is presented by theologians as two interrelated processes – ordinary natural changes, as the objectification of the boundless will of God in action and his direct creative acts of influencing the universe in a miracle. The modern elucidation of the essential and necessary features of these concepts, for the most part, strives to ensure that with any, even the most daring theological innovations, they still retain the general immutability of their content and their conformity with the basic Christian principles. The providence of God and the miracle, as a special case of it, in accordance with fundamental Christian teachings, without significant disagreement, are clearly interpreted by theologians of all major Christian denominations in their theophanic perspective, as the constant discovery of God in the realm of their own creation. Almost all major theological approaches to this issue boil down to justifying and showing the presence of God in the natural and human world through the terms "preservation" and "management", as well as by pointing to emergency cases of God's direct creative acts. Such ways of God's interaction with the world, according to theologians, are designed to preserve the ontological balance of being, which was originally established by God, which is accidental and has no basis for its existence in itself. The ontological instability of the world, consisting in its randomness and the danger of its return to non-existence, is completely balanced by the Providence of God. This Providence is aimed at preserving the originality of the world, it is also the source of its formation, it also forms its basis as an internal goal. The providence of God, without much disagreement, is shown by theologians of the main Christian movements as successive processes, on the one hand, of ordinary natural changes, as the objectification of the divine will in action, and on the other hand, as direct creative acts of God's interaction with the world in a miracle, when he creates something or superior in strength to natural things. The content of the innovations allowed here by theologians mainly covers the clarification of the existing understanding of the logical connection between the concepts of "general providence", "special providence" and "miracle" and, most importantly, the establishment of a measure of their correlation with the factors of the objective world. Common in the positions of theologians of different Christian denominations is that they unanimously emphasize the inadmissibility of a speculative interpretation of the above concepts. All this, in the end, is aimed at introducing into the minds of believers the ontological image of God, constantly testifying to itself in history and the obligatory ontologization of a miracle.

Контингентість – як спосіб буття світу: особливості теологічних інтерпретацій

The main objective of this article is to study the traditional Christian doctrine of the ontological balance of beings established by God, which is contingent and does not have a deep first reason for its own existence in itself, as well as the attempts of contemporary theologians to modernize this doctrine. The author's special attention is focused on the components of the theological doctrine of the "deeds of God", where the researchers examjning the topics of religion, considering the idea of direct divine causality, inevitably raise the question of its direct goal - maintaining the existence of the world and preventing it (the world) from sliding into the abyss of non-existence. The choice of theoretical and methodological approaches of the article is determined by the very subject of thought and the nature of the tasks. The providence of God and the miracle, as its special case, in accordance with fundamental Christian instructions, without significant disagreement, are clearly interpreted by theologians of all major Christian denominations in their theophanic perspective, as a permanent manifestation of God in the realm of God’s own creation. Almost all the main theological approaches to this issue aim justify and show the presence of God in the natural and human world through the terms of «preservation» and «management», and also, invariably, by highlighting over exstraordinary cases of direct creative acts of God in the world, through miracle. These means of God's interaction with the world, according to the theologians, are intended to preserve the ontological balance of the being, which was originally established by God, which is contingent, that is, is not the cause of itself. The ontological instability of the world, which lies in its contingency and the danger of its return to non-existence, is completely balanced by the activity of God; the latter is aimed not only at preserving the originality of the world, but also acts as the source of its formation, relies on its basis as an internal goal. The providence of God, without much disagreement, is shown by theologians of the main Christian movements as coherent processes, on the one hand, ordinary natural changes, as the objectification of the divine will in action, and on the other hand, as direct creative acts of God's interaction with the world in a miracle, when he does something surpassing the power of natural things. Common in the positions of theologians of different Christian denominations is also the fact that they unanimously emphasize the inadmissibility of a speculative interpretation of these concepts. All this, in the end, is aimed at introducing into the minds of believers the ontological image of God, who constantly indicates his presence in history and the indispensable ontologization of a miracle. Without this, faith is ultimately annihilated. In this case, the ideological opponents of religion get the opportunity to assert the thesis about providence and miracles as the results of ignorance or deliberate deceit. The main result of the study of the problem leads to the conclusion that for theologians who are in search of acceptable models for expressing the creative essence of God, modernizing the religious picture of the world and its main elements intends to reveal the essential in the doctrine by moving from the figurative-fantastic to the deep-true; all this, according to the theologians, should testify to the eternal values of the religious worldview in all the vicissitudes of epochs and cultures.

Ontological Instability and the Place of the Subject in Contemporary Fiction

Ontological Instability and the Place of the Subject in Contemporary Fiction

Ontological Instability and Nonhuman Presence in Twenty-First-Century New York Fiction

Ontological Instability and Nonhuman Presence in Twenty-First-Century New York Fiction

Afterword: Earnest Ontology in the Year of the Flood

The present special issue seeks to capture the difference between the ontological instability and reality pluralism that characterized late-twentieth-century postmodernist fiction and the kind that characterizes twenty-first-century literaryfiction. How should we talk about what the editors call the earnest ontologies of twenty-first-century alternative-reality fiction, especially by contrast with the presumably frivolous ontologies of postmodernism? Many of these essays seem to be edging toward a definition of twenty-first-century reality pluralism and alternativity in science-fictional terms. According to Darko Suvin's classic definition, science fiction is the literature of cognitive estrangement, which might just be another way of saying earnest ontology. The contributors to this special issue might have thought they were describing post-postmodernism, but what they are really describing seems to be something like the science-fictionalization of mainstream literary fiction—which might, indeed, be as good a definition of post-postmodernism as any.

The creative remembering of the self: Spatial and temporal characteristics of Will Self’s “Walking to Hollywood: Memories of before the fall” and Ben Lerner’s “10:04”

In the present paper we make an attempt to define the phenomenon of autofiction as opposed to the well-established notion of autobiography, that over the last number of years has sparked off considerable debate about factual and fictional in life-writing, with the latter becoming of a major interest to literary researchers and cognitive linguists. The purpose of the analysis of the above-mentioned texts is to compare and possibly contrast them, while investigating the self-centered, individualized nature of autofiction, as it manifests itself in these long and exhausting trips through time and space. Since the texts in question proved to demonstrate a certain ontological instability, we argue for the existence of the “impossible worlds” within the autofictional text, that is, not only it signals the confrontation between the actual (“real”) world and fictional world, but also between the fictional world and the “impossible world” as part of a broader concept of “unnatural narrative”. “Unnatural narrative”, in turn, allows for further investigation of “unnatural temporalities” and “antimimetic spaces” which has become the focal point of the present research. The results summed up in this paper confirm the importance of techniques and strategies employed by the authors in constituting the alternative type of self-narration, with the fictional prevailing over the factual.

Jerarquización castrense en el Colegio Militar Leoncio Prado de La ciudad y los perros (1963)

Esta obra literaria de Mario Vargas Llosa plasma una configuración asimétrica en sus personajes. Esta es distintiva de la condición moderna que justifica su inestabilidad ontológica, tal como lo constata Milagros Ezquerro. A su vez, se comprende por el contexto en el que se desarrolla: etapa dictatorial que se atraviesa en el Perú y Latinoamericana en la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Retomando esta premisa, este artículo tendrá como objetivo fundamentar cuáles son los enclaves que delimitan y convergen la constitución de las jerarquías que adoptan las autoridades responsables y los cadetes que oscilan en el universo castrense de la novela. Para ello, se corroborará con la noción de violencia que fluctúa Walter Benjamín, la concepción de espacio de Iuri Lotman y el paradigma del universo militar que aborda Herbert Morote. Estas categorías se imbricarán para demostrar con triángulos jerárquicos la implicancia que se alcanzó con este tipo de instrucción. https://doi.org/10.17398/2660-7301.43.157

Capricious Kinds

According to Ian Hacking, some human kinds are subject to a peculiar type of classificatory instability: individuals change in reaction to being classified, which in turn leads to a revision of our understanding of the kind. Hacking’s claim that these ‘human interactive kinds’ cannot be natural kinds has been vehemently criticized on the grounds that similar patterns of instability occur in paradigmatic examples of natural kinds. I argue that the dialectic of the extant debate misses the core conceptual problem of human interactive kinds. The problem is not that these kinds are particularly unstable but ‘capricious’—their members behave in wayward, unexpected manners that defeats existing theoretical understanding. The reason for that, I argue, is that human interactive kinds are often ‘hybrid kinds’ consisting of a base kind and an associated status, which makes mechanisms that support patterns of change and stability systematically difficult to understand and predict. 1. Introduction2. The Extant Discussion 2.1. Hacking’s account of interactive kinds2.2. Classificatory feedback in non-human kinds3. Natural kinds and Ontological Instability 3.1. Understanding instability3.2. The problem of stabilizing feedback3.3. Summary4. Capricious Kinds 4.1. Biased conceptualization4.2. Studying social status5. Conclusion

A Post-Colonial Ontology? Tim Winton’s The Riders and the Challenge to White-Settler Identity

Through a reading of Australian non-Indigenous author Tim Winton and his novel The Riders, this essay seeks to shake to the very roots white-settler understandings of identity and belonging. The essay treads respectfully into the field of Australian identity, recognizing that Indigenous people’s ancient and sacred relationship with country and the formation of treaties with the nation, are now rightfully central on national agendas. However, this essay asks the following question: what are the ontological grounds upon which respectful dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians might occur, after such violent and traumatic history? The essay explores the possible grounds for an evolving dialogue, one which will be necessarily intersectional: (post)colonial, spiritual/ontological and material. Further, the essay identifies “spirituality” and “ontology” as broad denominators for religion, speculating on a (post)colonial ontology which centers on home and (un)belonging. White-settler Australians, this essay argues, must confront deep ontological issues of brokenness if they are to take part meaningfully in future dialogues. Scully, the protagonist of The Riders, finds himself far from home and stripped of almost all the markers of his former identity: as Australian, as husband, and as a man in control of his life. The novel probes (un)belonging for this individual descendent of colonial Australia, as trauma engulfs him. Further, it will be argued that The Riders prefigures the wider, potentially positive aspects of a post-colonial ontology of (un)belonging, as white-settler Australians come to enunciate a broken history, and ontological instability. Such recognition, this essay argues, is a preliminary step towards a fuller post-colonial dialogue in Australia.

Haunting Ruins in a Western Ghost Town: Authentic Violence and Recursive Gaze at Bodie, California

This essay examines Bodie, a California ghost town, as a “modern ruin.” Working from a hauntological framework, I first investigate how Bodie enacts a rhetoric of authenticity by inviting personal encounters with the mortality of the town’s missing inhabitants. I then complicate Bodie’s brand of authenticity by identifying how efforts to rouse the ghosts of the past destabilize the ontological security of its present viewers. I ultimately argue that tourists transform the town’s ontological instability into a performance of recursive gaze whose pleasures enable a perceptual management of overlapping temporalities, particularly as visitors imagine themselves among the ghosts of Bodie.

Bollywood Stars and Cancer Memoirs: The Year in India

Bollywood Stars and Cancer MemoirsThe Year in India Pramod K. Nayar (bio) Two cancer memoirs from Bollywood heroines were published in 2019: Manisha Koirala's Healed: How Cancer Gave Me A New Life and Lisa Ray's Close to the Bone. Koirala's text begins with her diagnosis, and concludes with her healing and subsequent attempts to establish a new lifestyle. Ray's text arrives at "cancer time"—Nancy Miller's term, defined as the time spent in "diagnosis, staging, prognosis, protocol," where the "only future fixed chronology is that of treatment sessions" (217)—almost two-thirds into the narrative, with the bulk of her book focused on her childhood and career. Ray's work lists "with Neelam Kumar" under the authorname, though the extent of authorial collaboration and contribution is unclear. Celebrity culture in India is constituted, primarily, by film stars and their lives. Sports stars are famous, but it is film personalities that take up maximum space on page three of major newspapers, with reams of glossy tabloid paper devoted to "uncovering" their private lives. Bollywood stars remain the cornerstone of India's celebrity culture in terms of their affective impact: their lifestyles are the subject of reportage, their appearances and fashion the subject of imitation, and their controversies the stuff of the rumor mills. Scandals, as in any celebrity culture, are important events in Bollywood lives as well: their extramarital affairs, divorces, legal crises, substance abuse, and squabbles feature in magazines such as Filmfare. The stars' philanthropic work and activism are also highly visible and the subject of public debates (Nayar, "Brand Bollywood"). Deaths in their families, or of the stars themselves, such as Sridevi's drowning in a bathtub in 2018, also receive intensive coverage. In the recent past, revelations about stars' unhappy childhoods or depression have also made the news, most notably the case of top-ranked star Deepika Padukone, who was the face of depression in a nationwide campaign about mental health. That she went public about her history of depression was often touted as playing a pivotal role in drawing attention to a national crisis. It is in this context of the high visibility of their lives as stars that memoirs of their diseases are consumed. [End Page 86] These disease memoirs may be termed "celebrity somatography," extending the original meaning of the term "somatography"—body visualization, but also employed by G. Thomas Couser to speak of memoirs by people with disabilities (Signifying Bodies 2)—from a focus on the star-body to the biosocial network engendered by the disease and its treatment processes. From the Cosmetic to the Pathologized Body The most notable feature of the celebrity somatography is the careful account of the body and the ontological instability that appears with the disease, mapping a shift from the cosmetic to the pathologized body. Both Ray and Koirala, as film stars, present their glamorous, highly visible lives and bodies. They discuss their roles on screen, the progress of their careers, and their social networks within the film industry. Their books are interleaved with images and stills from their careers.1 Ray speaks of her stage performances (116–17), her modelling (120–22), and the parties where she is constantly on show as a glamorous, doll-like public figure. She records, self-reflexively, the sense of being on display, of role-playing: "A large chunk of my early life had been about looking like someone else" (190). But she is also intensely aware of her ontological and corporeal identity: "It was a vital shock of oxygen, this idea, that it was my individuality that was sacred, not fitting into an arbitrary standard of beauty" (190–91). Like Ray, Koirala also records how her public image began to slowly generate an emotion different from triumph or happiness: "I became a robot—instantly donning another persona at the snap of 'Lights, Camera, Action'" (78). The focus on appearance and the public consumption of a star's good looks foregrounds the "cosmetic body." "Cosmetic body" is my shorthand term for the star's body that foregrounds the looks, style, and fashion of the star over anything else. That is, the "cosmetic body" is the star...

РЕПРЕЗЕНТАЦИЯ ГЕНДЕРА В РЕКЛАМЕ: СТРАТЕГИИ, СТЕРЕОТИПЫ, СРЕДСТВА

The article discusses the problem of cultural design of gender in modern advertising discourse. The existing and emerging types of gender identity are classified in Western advertising of the second half of the XX century. The dual nature of advertising is noted: on the one hand, it broadcasts the process of forming identity, on the other hand, it formulates the norms of feminism/masculinity. Advertising, being a powerful institution of symbolic power of modern consumption society, has a strong influence on the parameters of identity formation, the public position of the individual, as well as on the wide stratum of cultural and social processes in general. The communicative system of advertising as a means of mass influence, ensures the exchange, storage and accumulation of «collective information», «collective memory». At the same time, the process of layering ideologues and archetypes with both existing in the public unconscious and newly emerging phenomena and situations takes place. In creating gender-stratified advertising, techniques such as the use of semantic means of influence are used; creation of a specific design of advertising messages; broadcasting stereotypical emotionally rich images. Advertising hyperbolizes the differences between the sexes and renders stereotypical gender qualities – from the way of thinking of advertising heroes, to manifestations of non-verbal semiotics and paralinguistics. The author concludes that doubts about his own body, its design and representation are a logical result of the general ontological instability of the postmodern era, in which the original concepts of truth, values, traditions are blurred. Objective advertising has a special role in this.

The Weird Time of Fossils: Irrational Ontologies

In its common usage, weird describes something strange or out of place, a break from the expected order of things. This disruption of order is also essential to the weird as a literary mode, creating a sense of disorientation in both characters and readers through encounters with the "irrational" and inexplicable. This article contemplates time as one form of order that weird fiction disrupts through two related figures—the fossil and the found manuscript—in texts by Caitlín R. Kiernan and Stephen King. Where the fossil represents an object-figure of temporal rupture, the found manuscript serves as both an object and a formal structure: a layered text whose metafictional irruptions suggest deeper ontological instability. Both the fossil and the found manuscript frustrate a linear sense of time, introducing alternate possibilities for reality that challenge dominant Western logics.

Air, Bubble and the Horrid Image: The Representation of Fear and the Supernatural in Macbeth

This article examines the representations of the supernatural in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which served as a significant source for later horror literature. It shows that the play’s rhetoric of horror and of the supernatural depends on its shifting discourse of nature. Nature in Macbeth refers to an external, nonhuman nature of cosmic events and elemental figures (air, bubble and fire) as well as to an internal, human nature of “horrid” images and surmises. Supernatural elements derive from the ontological instability in both external and internal nature, and relate particularly to those actions or events, through which nature becomes disturbed and duplicated. As the imaginary dagger scene indicates, the most terrifying source of the supernatural in the play is the human-made image that duplicates nature internally.