Mental and Ontological Simulacra: Non-Rationality and Non-Reality in Works by Philip K. Dick

• Thesis title in Czech: Mentální a ontologická simulakra: ne-racionalita a ne-reálno v dílech Philipa K. Dicka
• Thesis title in English: Mental and Ontological Simulacra: Non-Rationality and Non-Reality in Works by Philip K. Dick
• Key words: Posun reality|Multiplicita|Simulakra|Gilles Deleuze|Fokalizace|Fokalizační perspektiva|Narativní realita|Ne-reálno|Ne-racionalita|Dokážeme vás stvořit|Marsovský skluz v čase|Klany Alfanského měsíce
• English key words: Reality shifting|Multiplicity|Simulacra|Gilles Deleuze|Focalization|Focalizing perspective|Narrative reality|Non-reality|Non-rationality|We Can Build You|Martian Time-Slip|Clans of the Alphane Moon
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2017/2018
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: doc. Erik Sherman Roraback, D.Phil.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 19.02.2018
• Date of assignment: 19.02.2018
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 21.02.2018
• Date and time of defence: 11.06.2020 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 09.05.2020
• Date of proceeded defence: 11.06.2020
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: Mgr. Pavla Veselá, Ph.D.

Guidelines

Expected time of the thesis submission:autumn 2018 (State Exam in spring 2019)

In the proposed thesis, I intend to look at the workings of fictional realities in several works by Philip K. Dick, including Martian Time-Slip, Clans of the Alphane Moon and We Can Build You. Dickian criticism concerned with the subject of reality commonly and consistently demonstrates certain characteristics. Firstly, it sees realities in a given work by Dick as existing not on a level interpretative playing field but always in oppositions and hierarchies of degree, whose members are attributed varying levels of significance, relevance and priority (e.g., the opposition of real and unreal/artificial/imaginary constructs; the hierarchy based on the degree of veracity in relation to the external, objective reality; the hierarchy based on the degree of the probability of actuality in a fictional universe; etc.). Secondly, there is the premise of essential interpretative stability to a reality construct at a given moment of interpretation concerning the units/properties in which the elements of that reality or its entirety are described (e.g., meaning, significance, truth value, etc.) – in other words, at one moment in a observed narrative a reality construct available to the interpreter’s eye can be described in certain ways but not in others, the latter positions being untenable considering the logic of singular, objective, irrefutable positivistic truth and the principle of mutual exclusivity (e.g., a given reality is found either fake or real, but both propositions cannot be true at the same time).
My own methodologyproceeds from the interest in how fictional realities in a Dick narrative interact and what interpretative venues unfold through their intersection when the differences between them are not exclusively construed as oppositions and hierarchies as described above. Here I would like to recognize the debt which my reading of Dick’s work owes to Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy and, specifically, to the Deleuzian conception of immanent difference.
The argument of this MA thesis is that Dick expresses reality as a constant unfolding of the innate potential of being, which is manifested by means of “non-rationality” and “non-reality.” In so doing Dick’s works dramatize the overflow of seemingly fixed categories that originate in and which we are used to capture what Heraclitus termed koinos kosmos, the shared world. In this conception of fictional reality representation I am again inspired by Deleuze’s difference, which overwhelms identities it constitutes. “Non-rationality” and “non-reality” function according to Deleuze’s definition of simulacra: “by simulacrum we should not understand a simple imitation but rather the act by which the very idea of a model or privileged position is challenged and overturned” (Difference and Repetition, p. 69).
“Non-reality” is a term that depicts a beyond-reality model that circumvents the sanctioned doctrinal models of reality construction structured according to a binary opposition contrasting reality with unreality – models biased toward reality as the professed source of absolute, singular truth; models in which unreality automatically implies untruth and suggests the existence of truth as its converse and sole counterpart. Analogically, “non-rationality” is a beyond-rationality mental model that avoids the binary choice between rationality and irrationality of traditional rational mind/behaviour models; models in which irrationality suggests its binary, only opposite; models which, by dint of their close dependence on dualistic reality models, imply departure from reality/truth.
It is not that Dick’s fiction worlds do not distinguish between reality and false reality or between rationality and irrationality; rather, it is that these terms indicate an interpretative framework underwritten by the assumption of stability of the fictional structure, from which springs, only as a secondary effect, the uncertainty and flux of meaning. On the other hand, this essay claims that ontology in Dick is characterized by its fluidity, which allows us to see reality in the moment of becoming, actualizing itself. Dick does not force his science fiction characters and worlds to commit to stability. Instead he creates hermeneutically open-ended worlds characterized by “non-reality” and “non-rationality,” which challenge and overturn aspects of koinos kosmos, including our understanding of concepts like humanity, sanity, morality, etc. in their generality and specificity.

References

Bibliography
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Continuum, 2001.
Freedman, Carl. Critical Theory and Science Fiction. Wesleyan University Press, 2000.
Laing, R. D. The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness. Penguin Books, 1990.
May, Todd. Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Rieger, Branimir R, editor. Dionysus in Literature: Essays on Literary Madness. Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1994.
Rossi, Umberto. The Twisted Worlds of Philip K. Dick: A Reading of Twenty Ontologically Uncertain Novels. McFarland & Co, 2011.
Sutin, Lawrence, editor. The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings. Vintage Books, 1995.
Umland, Samuel J., editor. Philip K. Dick: Contemporary Critical Interpretations. Greenwood Press, 1995.