Victoria University

I Am that I Am: Subjectivity and World View in the Science Fictions of Philip K. Dick

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dc.contributor.advisor Opie, Brian
dc.contributor.author Rose, Bradley
dc.date.accessioned 2012-06-22T00:22:57Z
dc.date.available 2012-06-22T00:22:57Z
dc.date.copyright 2012
dc.date.copyright 2012
dc.date.issued 2012
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10063/2306
dc.description.abstract In this account of American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick's work, the aim has been to describe the involvement of assumptions inherited from philosophical and scientific discourse in both the understanding and experience of subjectivity. It is argued that Dick's representations of identity both picture the tensions engendered by the prevalent reality standard with which he had to deal and, in their development, come to articulate a path beyond the impasse this standard presents. The fundamental insufficiency of the world view Dick's fiction both encounters and embodies is epitomised by the twin questions with which he characterised his work: 'what is human?' and 'what is real?' In coming to terms with the significance of these questions the work of the Austrian philosopher and scientist Rudolf Steiner has been engaged as a critical foil to Dick's fictionalising. Special attention is given to the epistemological basis of Steiner's anthroposophy and its account of the world and our peculiar situation in it that, far from asserting any external and unvarying standard of truth, describes a process essentially evolutionary and unfixed. It is claimed that in Steiner, as in Dick, the human contribution to both identity and reality constitutes the validity of each, a matrix of subject and object from which one's self is delivered, in each instance a new beginning. en_NZ
dc.language.iso en_NZ
dc.publisher Victoria University of Wellington en_NZ
dc.subject Identity en_NZ
dc.subject Rudolf Steiner en_NZ
dc.subject Reality en_NZ
dc.title I Am that I Am: Subjectivity and World View in the Science Fictions of Philip K. Dick en_NZ
dc.type Text en_NZ
vuwschema.contributor.unit School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies en_NZ
vuwschema.subject.marsden 420206 North American (Literature Studies) en_NZ
vuwschema.subject.marsden 420220 Comparative Literature Studies en_NZ
vuwschema.type.vuw Awarded Research Masters Thesis en_NZ
thesis.degree.discipline English en_NZ
thesis.degree.grantor Victoria University of Wellington en_NZ
thesis.degree.level Master's en_NZ
thesis.degree.name Master of Arts en_NZ
vuwschema.subject.anzsrcfor 200599 Literary Studies not elsewhere classified en_NZ


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