Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The anthropometric turn
- 1 Narrating the animal, amputating the soul
- 2 Conrad and technology: homo ex machina
- 3 The Lawrentian transcendent: after the fall
- 4 Woolf's luminance: time out of mind
- 5 Doubting Beckett: voices descant, stories still
- Conclusion: Humanness unbound
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Conrad and technology: homo ex machina
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The anthropometric turn
- 1 Narrating the animal, amputating the soul
- 2 Conrad and technology: homo ex machina
- 3 The Lawrentian transcendent: after the fall
- 4 Woolf's luminance: time out of mind
- 5 Doubting Beckett: voices descant, stories still
- Conclusion: Humanness unbound
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The secret of the universe is in the existence of horizontal waves whose varied vibrations are at the bottom of all states of consciousness. If the waves were vertical the universe would be different … Therefore it follows that two universes may exist in the same place and in the same time – and not only two universes but an infinity of different universes – if by universe we mean a set of states of consciousness …
Joseph ConradThrough the nineteenth century runs the thread of anxiety that man may not be man, that his relation to the world may cease to be a human one.
Lionel TrillingThe question of free will is most often posed in terms of human agency. Are we the sum total of our heredity and surroundings, or is there some autonomous, inner authority that steers our decisionmaking capability? I suggest that, for the present anthropometric enquiry, the question of whether human beings are able to behave in recognisably agential ways or not is less critical than what actually becomes of action once it is performed. Intentions often do not tally with outcomes, and causes become entangled with consequences.
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- Information
- Modernism, Narrative and Humanism , pp. 56 - 86Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002