The Mercurial Effects of Abstract Reflection: Troubling Hegemonic Cultures of Knowledge in Ted Chiang’s Short Math Fiction and Richard Powers’s Maximalist Arboreal Novel
Stella Butter
Abstract:Narrative fiction that combines mathematical or scientific discourses with a pronounced interest in the topic of reasoning, particularly the mercurial effects of abstraction, unfolds an especially multi-faceted engagement with hegemonic cultures of knowledge. The contrastive analysis of two contemporary works of American fiction illustrates the role that the affordances of aesthetic form thereby play: Ted Chiang’s “Division by Zero”, a short story concerned with mathematical and empathic cultures of knowledge,… Show more
Set email alert for when this publication receives citations?
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.