From Possible Worlds to Virtual Realities: Approaches to Postmodernism

Ruth Ronen. "Philosophical Realism and Postmodern Antirealism."

Lubomir Doleel. "Possible Worlds: Density, Gaps, and Inference."

William Ashline. "The Problem of Impossible Fictions."

May Charles. "A postmodern Challenge to Reference-World Construction: Gilbert's Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew."

Marie-Laure Ryan. "Allegories of Immersion: Virtual Narration in Postmodern Fiction."

Lance Olson. "Virtual Termites: A Hypotextual Technomutant Explo(it)ration of William Gibson and the Electroninc Beyond(s)."

Mark Nunes. "Jean Baudillard in Cyberspace: Internet, Virtuality, and Postmodernity."
 
 
 
 
 

Marie-Laure Ryan. "Introduction: From Possible Worlds to Virtual Reality."

One of the dominant themes of postmodern thought is its fascination for everything that offers alternatives to the concept of reality. The theory of possible worlds (PW) and the technological phenomenon of virtual reality (VR) fall into that category. But neither of these concepts supports a collapse of the distinction between reality and virtuality. PW theory is grounded in an opposition between the actual world and merely possible worlds. This opposition conflicts with the postmodern ideal of a decentered ontology. VR reconciles the concepts of virtuality and reality by allowing the user to experience the virtual as if it were real. This reconciliation inverts the postmodern ambition to demonstrate the inherent virtuality of what passes as the real. The metaphorical use of the term "virtual" and of its electronic relative of "cyberspace" in contemporary culture indicates however that these concepts are being recuperated in the project of virtualizing reality.

Ruth Ronen. "Philosophical Realism and Postmodern Antirealism."

The philosophical debate between realists and antirealists can illuminate the position of literary theorists towards questions of representation in literature can clarify realism as a philosophical position. Defining the parameters of realism in philosophy forms the grounds for identifying such a position in the context of literary theory. The assumptions of philosophical realism serve as tools for contemplating the assumptions guiding theories of postmodernism. The practice of formulating a poetics of postmodernism, as implemented in literary studies, does not contradict a realist perspective. That is, despite a characteristic tendency of discourse about postmodernism to forward radical relativistic claims about culture and to use a style of discourse that promulgates antirealist formulations, that critical approaches to literary postmodernism are in fact much less extreme in their practices.

Lubomir Doleel. "Possible Worlds: Density, Gaps, and Inference."

Possible-world semantics of fictionality has recognized that fictional worlds are incomplete, but the theoretical treatment of gaps has been rather sketchy. In contrast to Wolfgang Tser's theory of reading, which postulates the "filling-in" of gaps, a claim is made that gaps are integral constituents of the fictional-world structure. But a theoretical distinction has to be made between irrecoverable gaps and implicit fictional facts. The fictional text constructs the fictional world through both explicit and implicit texture. Implicit meaning is recovered by inference, which combines logical and cognitive procedures. Fictional encyclopedia is one of the crucial cognitive structures activated in this recovery. The concept is especially pertinent for the semantics of modernist and postmodernist fiction, whose fictional encyclopedias always diverge in different ways and degrees from the actual-world encyclopedia. The reader's reconstruction of fictional worlds is guided primarily by global conditions operative in fictional texts. One of the global regularities, the intentional function of density, is responsible for the fictional world's saturation.

William Ashline. "The Problem of Impossible Fictions."

A typology of impossible fictions include violations of logical laws, the transgression of diegetic levels in narrative, the selection of an infinite number of narrative paths, the paradox of time travel, and the problem of compossible characters. Lubomír Dole?el's and Umberto Eco's accounts are too rigid while Brian McHale's, though liberal enough to encompass the vast modal range of fiction, confuses the law of noncontradiction with the principle of bivalence. The philosopher David Lewis has a much richer account of modal concepts though his explanation of impossible fiction is limited. Lewis attempts to make sense of fictional violations of the law of noncontradiction in terms of the reader's cognitive engagement with the text. The reader tends to sort out these violations by determining points of undecidability. Truly impossible fictions are those incapable of being expressed or invented.

May Charles. "A postmodern Challenge to Reference-World Construction: Gilbert's Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew."

The article explores the narrative subversions of postmodern metafiction which challenge fictional-world semantic theory, assessing the problems within an expanded theoretical model. Through the example of Mulligan Stew, interrelated and often co-existing narrative techniques such as self-reflexivity/overt fictionality, narrative contradiction, and metafictional narrative embedding are assessed for effect on fictional world structures, including logical and ontological impossibility. Applying the concept of textual reference world as a reader-construct, discussing the postmodern problematizing of dual reading roles, and exploring the invalidation of world-models peculiar to the postmodern, the article elaborates how such fiction provides the most extreme challenge to reference world construction. A partial solution is proposed through recognition of the dominance of text-models within the hierarchy of text-external knowledge, successful reading strategies being informed by the postmodern text-model.

Marie-Laure Ryan. "Allegories of Immersion: Virtual Narration in Postmodern Fiction."

Developing the optical meaning of the term "virtual" results in a definition of virtual narration as the evocation of a nonactual or temporally remote world as mirrored within either a lower level of reality or a more recent stage of the same world through such a reflecting device as a painting, photograph, movie, television show, novel, or story. The technique is evident in texts by William Gibson, Robbe-Grillet, Borges, Cortázar, and Calvino. While the inherent self-reflexivity of virtual narration suggests a standard postmodern interpretation of antimimetism and a focus on textuality, its tendency to fade into real narration suggests another reading: through this instability, virtual narration contributes to an allegorical reenactment of the reader's immersion in a fictional world.

Lance Olson. "Virtual Termites: A Hypotextual Technomutant Explo(it)ration of William Gibson and the Electroninc Beyond(s)."

As a student at the University of British Columbia in 1976, the godfather of cyberpunk William Gibson discovered an essay by iconoclastic film critic Manny Farber called "Elephant Art and Termite Art," one of the few essays that directly influenced Gibson?s aesthetics. In it, Farber distinguishes between two kinds of creation: (1) white elephant art, which embraces the idea of a well-crafted, logical arena and (2) termite art, which embraces freedom and multiplicity.  This essay, itself a performance of termite criticism, contradictorily explores the contradictory termite impulse in Gibson?s fiction, arguing along the way that Gibson?s virtual world, cyberspace, is especially emblematic of termite consciousness.

Mark Nunes. "Jean Baudillard in Cyberspace: Internet, Virtuality, and Postmodernity."

Two metaphors have dominated figurations of internet: the "information superhighway" and "cyberspace." Both these metaphors create an image of internet as a virtual world, one in which motion and direction become possible. These developments in the metaphorical presentation of the internet parallel Jean Baudrillard's discussion of an emerging "hyperreality"?a world of simulation in which "the real" becomes less significant than its model. A Baudrillardian reading of internet presents the internet as a "hypertelic" mode of communication. As internet develops, "sites" of virtual reality become more compelling and thereby more "real," exposing the overall conceptual model of Internet as a comprehensive and comprehendible world and a substitute for the real world. But Baudrillard also provides room for a reversal of this reading in which internet becomes a challenge to these closed systems. Ultimately, the seductive qualities of the technology can also lead to the creation of a "space" for drift, experimentation, and play.