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The Cognitive Literary Theory of Richard Powers’s Galatea 2.2
- MFS Modern Fiction Studies
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 61, Number 2, Summer 2015
- pp. 226-250
- 10.1353/mfs.2015.0020
- Article
- Additional Information
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By detailing the efforts of a cognitive scientist and a writer to develop a connectionist computer capable of reading and commenting on literature, Richard Powers's Galatea 2.2 develops a sophisticated cognitive literary theory. At the same time, it represents postmodernist or poststructuralist theory in dismissive yet evasive terms. Thus the novel takes a double stance: while the novel's cognitive theory undercuts the poststructuralist model of language, it affirms or parallels some poststructuralist views of truth, meaning, and human nature.