"Testing the Limits": What Happens When Digital Humanities Meets Alternative Worldviews

"Testing the Limits" reflects upon the implications of a conceptual paradigm shift in theoretical approaches to the use of immersive technologies in a postcolonial, post-positivistic world. This reflection means bringing into proximity alternative explanatory models of "reality"—such as the indigenous philosophy of Leroy Little Bear where it relates to Western science, David Peat's thoughts on quantum theory and his collaboration with Leroy Little Bear, and the theory of synchronicity as developed by Carl G. Jung in collaboration with physicist Wolfgang Pauli—where these models open into alternative worldviews which offer a hypothetical 'rapprochement' in the history of consciousness between science and art. This study, therefore, focuses less on the use of immersive technology in the Humanities than on 'the instrumentality of theory itself' in constructing perceptual models of reality' (including scientific and artistic worldviews), especially where it is "virtual" and where it needs to consider diverse philosophies, scientific theories and representations of space/time in relation to subjectivities. To illustrate this claim, the media work by Canadian artist Char Davies will be offered as a case study; Davies has gone on record seeking to subvert the visual aesthetic in VR and 3D computer graphics, which, in striving for "ever great photo realism," serves only to reinforce "the Cartesian divide between dominating subject and passive object." It is relevant in the context of this essay that Char Davies is a software developer and artist whose work is informed not only by her understanding of the history of consciousness in Western metaphysics, but also by her understanding of the relation of such history to quantum theory

Much Ado about Handwriting: Countersigning with the Other Hand in Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been seen as the nineteenth century prototype of the workings of the criminal mind. Similarly, current psychoanalytic readings of the novel suggest that it serves as a precursor to Freud’s theories on the structural model of personality, and repression and that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde can provide insight into the psychology of addiction, multiple personality disorder and borderline personality disorders, as these terms have currency in the discipline of modern psychology. Indeed, Stevenson’s novel can even be seen as a precursor to the very genre of Freud’s “case” study. In fact, current readings of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde continue to focus on its case study aspects, claiming that the novel shows “the composition and operation of the criminal mind” (Thomas qtd in Rosner, Spring 29). “Much Ado About Handwriting: Countersigning with the Other Hand in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is concerned with making a Gothic case “the composition and operation of the criminal mind,” but not because the word “composition” denotes a mental constitution that merely pre-exists the text or that the text refers to or represents a substantive criminal mind; instead the word suggests that there exists a displaced link between writing, reading, interpretation, and criminality as the shadowy “place” where the “other” begins and collusion enters the scene. Taking as a premise Jacques Derrida’s contention that “it is the ear of the other that signs,” this paper is concerned with “composition,” signatures and encryption as a way of exploring how these texts pose insoluble psychic double binds regarding the determination of criminality

In Derrida’s dream: a poetics of a well-made crypt

This question usually arises out of Derridean deconstruction: what is the relationship between writing and death? This dissertation, however, explores Jacques Derrida's evocation of the living-dead for purposes of theorizing what might be thought of as Derrida's "poetics of the crypt." The first section, "The First Partition: Without the Door," proposes the term "cryptomimesis" to describe how, in Derrida's writing, (the) "crypt" functions as the model, method and theory of a formal poetics based upon the fantasy of incorporation. Cryptomimesis is a writing practice that leads one to understand language and writing in spatial terms of the crypt-a contradictory topography of inside/outside. Such writing also produces a radical psychological model of the individual and collective "self" configured in terms of phantoms, haunting and (refused) mourning. This dissertation also argues that Derrida's poetics of the crypt exist in a certain relationship of correspondence with the Gothic and examines how Derrida's writing intersects or "folds" into that genre, taking as a premise that each is already inhabited, even haunted, by the other. Sections such as "'Darling,' It Said": Making a Contract With the Dead," and "The Question of theTomb," develop this notion of "correspondence" by examining a set of texts written by two American Gothic writers. The discussion posits that the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King give insight into Derrida's preoccupation with inheritance and legacy while illuminating his concern, in terms of writing, with the uncanny institution of architecture. This dissertation attempts to theorize Derrida's writing practice in spatial terms by drawing upon Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok's theory of the phantom and the crypt. It demonstrates how cryptomimesis involves the production of an uncanny imaginary space by playing with thetic referentiality. Final sections, "An Art of Chicanery" and "Inscribing the Wholly Other: No Fixed Address," develop the notion that to suspend the thetic relation is to confound (classical) distinctions between subject and object or "self" and "other." Above all, this dissertation attempts to demonstrate how, in Derrida's work, cryptomimesis is about writing the other and how such writing, predicated upon revenance and haunting, problematizes notions of the "subject," "autobiography," and "transference" and, therefore, problematizes textuality itself.Arts, Faculty ofEnglish, Department ofGraduat

Bringing the Collective Together: Nonhuman Animals, Humans and Practice at the University

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College, as part of the thematic series "The Ethics of Life, Use, and Care." Featuring Rod Preece, Professor Emeritus of Political Philosophy, Wilfrid Laurier University; Jodey Castricano, Critical Studies, UBC-O; Moderator: David Fraser, Zoologist, Animal Welfare Program, this lecture focuses on questions of ethics that interrogate habits of thought in the humanities and sciences in a 35-minute presentation by Rod Preece, political philosopher and well-respected Canadian scholar of animal rights.Graduate and Postdoctoral StudiesOther UBCUnreviewedFacult

Looking back, taking stock : Public Humanities at UBC Okanagan

On 16 January, 2023 the Public Humanities Hub Okanagan hosted the first in a series of events exploring the past and future role of the Public Humanities Hub at UBC Okanagan.Arts and Social Sciences, Irving K. Barber Faculty of (Okanagan)Creative and Critical Studies, Faculty of (Okanagan)Non UBCCommunity, Culture and Global Studies, Department of (Okanagan)History and Sociology, Department of (Okanagan)UnreviewedFacultyOthe