Master's Project (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2021This paper introduces and uses Paul Feyerabend’s Epistemological Anarchism (EA) as an
interpretive lens through which to read key passages in Thomas Pynchon’s 1997 novel Mason &
Dixon. In particular, this paper uses EA to provide a novel and distinct way of understanding
what Brian McHale terms the novel’s subjunctivity, or spaces of possibility. I use EA as a new
framework for understanding the epistemological, ontological, and humanitarian/ethical
dimensions of the novel’s subjunctive spaces, and hint at ways in which EA might be used in
Pynchon’s other novels
