The literary appropriation of science

Abstract

At the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), the challenge is to provide platforms for the fields of literature and science to engage in order to evolve interdisciplinary and critical frames of thinking. The postmodern fiction of Barthelme presents possibilities for such convergence. This article analyzes the strategies of three of his stories and analyzes their strategies of appropriating elements from the natural and social sciences. In Bunny Image, Loss of The Case of Bitsy S, " Barthelme shuffles the images and grammars of psychiatry, philosophy, popular culture, and the sex industry. He showcases ways of playing with the names of people and diseases: name-dropping, truncation, and the double bind. An inventory of effects reveals a complex underlying order that resonates with the overarching theme of loss "Report" offers a stylized interview regarding technology's role in war. In this story the chief engineer's surreal catalogues of technological achievements qualify as aesthetic instances of a long-running debate currently labeled under transhumanism and posthumanism. Finally, "at the End of the Mechanical Age" features a unique hybridization of Biblical and technological geneses. Through hyperbole, juxtaposition, anachronism and metafiction, Barthelme narrates the fate of lovers keenly conscious of time and the illusions that humanity conjures about it in order to survive it. The processes of such conjuration involve subdivision time into periods, naming past, present, and future and metaphorizing the unknown. Through there interpretation and their attend recommendation, the article lays open social science, natural science, and technology to the literacy intentions of UPLB teachers and students.

Source or Periodical Title

U.P. Los Baños Journal

Document Type

Article

Language

English

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