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4. Quantum Quandaries: Death and/of the Self
- University of Virginia Press
- Chapter
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Quantum Quandaries: Death and/of the Self We have seen how quantum theories contribute to the structure and the style of works by several writers in contemporary American fiction , underwriting them in a way that reflects the postmodern vision from many angles, but they also underscore several themes that these writers create and confront. The idea of a quantized self and the effects of the radical disruption in a character’s life caused by the actual death of the self, as well as the assault on the autonomous self as celebrated in American culture and myths, is very much at the visionary center of several of these writers’ works. First, however, let us briefly summarize the quantum realm and the aspects of the theories that have emerged from it as we have been doing throughout this discussion. What do we or can we know about the quantum realm at this particular time? As Werner Heisenberg suggested, “What we actually record are frequencies of the light radiated by the atom, but no actual path” (Physics 85). As far as we can tell, the quantum world itself remains inaccessible, invisible, unanalyzable, and unknown, existing in a state of perpetual and random flux, forever fluid, foggy, blurred, contradictory, and of such a radial otherness that no one has yet been able to truly understand or fathom it. There exists neither a sense of agency nor direction; no single vision or picture of it is possible; it is ontologically incomprehensible; and within its “boundaries,” time is reversible . In many ways it also suggests the unconscious in its remoteness and otherness. 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 128 : quir ks of the qua ntum Within that flux, particles, waves, and fields (these are all metaphors, descriptions we choose to describe what we cannot see) ceaselessly form, create , and annihilate one another in an endless eruption, as Plotnitsky sees it, “without consistency or reference, without consequence” (Reading Bohr 197). Such chaos contains all things and is not so much a vacuum or a void as it is a site full of virtual possibilities, rife with all things that come and go, emerge, and vanish at random. “The role of chaos as the incomprehensible in the conceptual architecture of quantum theory” (RB 198) buttresses the whole. It is as impossible to comprehend as it is for the conscious mind to comprehend itself and/or the unconscious mind. Fields, for instance, that were once seen as spreading out from a source may, in fact, be the source itself. We can see only the effects of quantum collisions, not the “objects” themselves (there are, of course, no “objects” as such), what Nick Herbert has described as “the interaction of light with atoms” (44): “The bottom line of many quantum experiments consists of patterns of tiny flashes on a phosphor screen” (185). We can observe only unique and singular occurrences and events that emerge from the random flux of the quantum realm, and each of these, as Plotnitsky suggests, remains irreducible, indivisible, and mutually exclusive of the others. Quantum theory is “still a theory of individual events or effects” (RB 113). What we see is what our instruments can measure, and our choice of instruments determines whether we see particles or waves. In the famous two-slit experiment, at one point we can see particles; in another, waves. Each mutually excludes the other; each emerges from the same random “beyond”; each suggests an ultimate discontinuity at the center of all things. We see, therefore, in each particular and separate measurement not visible objects but only traces, tracks, trails of light, collisions, spots, moments, flashes, each a different manifestation of the same flux as a particle, a wave, a field. As Plotnitsky again suggests, “Such traces should not be seen either as points resulting from classically conceived collisions between ‘particles’ and the screen or as resulting from a classical wave propagation. Neither ‘picture’ corresponds to what actually occurs” (RB 25). Heisenberg, whom Plotnitsky quotes, speculated that “we have learned that energy becomes matter when it takes the form of elementary particles. The states called elementary particles are just as complicated as the states of atoms and molecules. Or, to formulate it paradoxically: every particle consists [34.204.181.19] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 04:31 GMT) Quantum Quandaries : 129 of all other particles” (qtd. in RB 130). Heisenberg has also stated that “what the word wave or particle means, no one longer knows. . . . Classical words like wave...