The Effects of Binary Thinking in the Arts and Humanities

Dear Colleagues,

What are the effects of the recent re-emergence of binary oppositional thinking on contemporary literature and literary criticism? Reflecting the off/on operations of calculating machines, this recent surge of binary thinking often carries, in addition to its graphic divisions, political and ethical judgments attached to the interpretive reductions of oppositional sides. Grounded in the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato, the dualisms of Eastern yin/yan, Cartesian mind/body dualisms, and more recently in structuralism and the dialectical materialism of Marxist thought,

has the energetic re-emergence of binary modes of thought influenced the styles and topics of contemporary literary works? What does the reduction into binaries do to conceptions of the aesthetic? Has it altered the methods and goals of literary criticism? Does creating or analyzing literature from the assumption that all is divided into binary oppositions tend to reproduce those oppositions? Has such thinking reconstructed literature as a political battleground and the site of moral lessons and ethical propriety? In what ways has such an approach shifted or improved literary production and study? 

Prof. Dr. Judith Roof
Guest Editor

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• binary
• digital
• oppositions
• narrative
• literature
• art