Martin Štefl
"A Very Remarkable Piece of Iron”
Číslo: 1/2014
Periodikum: Prague Journal of English Studies
Klíčová slova: Virginia Woolf; G. E. Moore; short stories; states of mind; impersonality; psychology
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Anotace:
is article examines the supposed lack of “humanity” in Woolf’s short stories and
novels by identifying its source in the sphere of “solid objects” and in the way these
“objects” destabilize the coherence of what the western philosophical tradition typically
refers to as “subject” (in the Cartesian sense). Referring to Moore’s direct realism as
well as James’s and Mach’s radical empiricism, the discussion focuses on specifi c
states of heightened perceptive intensity in which the perceiving subject stumbles on
the verge of collapse and “mixes” itself with what it perceives. By considering these
limit cases, this paper tries to demonstrate the way in which Woolf’s fi ction might in
fact be understood as illustrative of the process of de-humanizing de-centralization
and dispersion of the already fl uid consciousness and its blending with the impersonal
material objects, resulting in a complete loss of one idea of “the human” (an idea based
on the intellectual autonomy and sovereignty of a unifi ed subject) and pointing towards
a post-human and post-modern condition in which human becomes defi ned by the
ever-widening circle of its own outside.
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novels by identifying its source in the sphere of “solid objects” and in the way these
“objects” destabilize the coherence of what the western philosophical tradition typically
refers to as “subject” (in the Cartesian sense). Referring to Moore’s direct realism as
well as James’s and Mach’s radical empiricism, the discussion focuses on specifi c
states of heightened perceptive intensity in which the perceiving subject stumbles on
the verge of collapse and “mixes” itself with what it perceives. By considering these
limit cases, this paper tries to demonstrate the way in which Woolf’s fi ction might in
fact be understood as illustrative of the process of de-humanizing de-centralization
and dispersion of the already fl uid consciousness and its blending with the impersonal
material objects, resulting in a complete loss of one idea of “the human” (an idea based
on the intellectual autonomy and sovereignty of a unifi ed subject) and pointing towards
a post-human and post-modern condition in which human becomes defi ned by the
ever-widening circle of its own outside.