With evidence ranging from visual representations by scanning tunneling microscopes to the fluid and dynamic language of poetry, my research shows that we are shifting from a culture primarily based on ‘sight’ to one that is involved with ‘touch,’ metaphorically and literally speaking. Recent developments in theory and technology, especially quantum physics and post-structuralism, have redefined representation to encompass the necessary reflex of the representer. To be sure, my research has also found feminist and postcolonial criticisms to echo this theory: both have sought to challenge representations due to the objectivity normally attributed to the representer, the Cartesian logic of which quantum theory has destabilized.
Thus, by reading poetry with a quantum theoretical lens, specifically the works of Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore, Anne Carson, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, I show how ‘touch’ plays into our language, consequently affecting how we think through language. / Master of Arts / This is an essay on language – how we read language, where we go with language, and how language affects the way we think. Because poetry is an activity that first realizes the limits of language and then attempts to go beyond those limits, reading and writing poetically teaches us to use language to think in a different manner, what I propose to be by <i>touch</i>: a quantum manner. With respect to the field of Linguistics, I want to clarify that I am not saying our thoughts are wholly limited and determined by our language – the space of our minds are quite far-reaching, and it is quite possible to think whatever we want. What I am saying, however, is that language <i>habituates</i> how we think, and poetry reveals these habits in an attempt to break from them. Marilynne Robinson calls these habits our “little island of the articulable, which we tend to mistake for reality itself” (21).
Thus I explore attempts at breaking linguistic, hence cognitive, habits with poetry through the writings of Anne Carson and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. I use feminist, post-colonial, and post-structural theories to formulate a methodology that shows how we <i>touch</i> language and understanding through poetry, at the same time enacting this poetic through my own writing
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/77688 |
| Date | 17 May 2017 |
| Creators | Tan, Czander LOPEZ |
| Contributors | English, Powell, Katrina M., Graham, Peter W., Gardner, Thomas M. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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