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• Poe’s Prehistoric Fiction and Pre/Post-Humanity: Speculation via "Silence"

  Masaomi Kobayashi

  Arizona Quarterly ( Johns Hopkins University Press )  80 ( 4 ) 81 - 104   2024年12月 [ 査読有り ]

  掲載種別: 研究論文（学術雑誌）

  　概要を見る

  The present study brings into sharp focus the prehistoric aspects of “Silence,” the 1838 tale by Edgar Allan Poe. The word “prehistoric” came into general use in the 1860s, and it was not until around the turn of the century that saw the emergence of prehistoric fiction in English. In “Silence,” however, Poe had already presented a form of prehistoric narrative by creating a fictional setting of West Central Africa. The Demon tells the frame narrator what happened when systems of writing had not yet been invented. The tale based predominantly on his story can then be seen as a spoken account of the prehistoric event that had yet to earn the epithet “historic.” As the story evolves, the man in the toga shows themselves standing on the rock—one engraved first with the word “DESOLATION” and then with the word “SILENCE.” Taken together, the abrupt appearance of the ancient Roman and the anonymous appearance of the capital words are highly symbolic of the dawn of protohistory—the threshold between prehistory and history. The man wears a world-weary expression that tells of his detachment from his prehistoric condition, under which words cannot be alone because they can exist in the spoken form alone. At the same time, he looks around and finds himself absolutely alone. This series of movements bespeaks of his commitment to the historic condition, under which words can be alone because they can now exist in the written form also. The tale ends with the passage where the frame narrator refers to “the fine tales in the volumes of the Magi,” suggesting history as an act of telling stories through writing a series of past events, including prehistoric ones. Thus “Silence,” which has been considered cryptic, can be decoded from an entirely historical perspective spanning from prehistory to protohistory to history. Overall, this study casts new light on prehistoric fiction by discovering the tale’s unexplored potential. It is to be noted, however, that while contributing to prehistory studies in close relation to the work of Poe, this study finds itself associated with philosophy studies with special reference to so-called phonocentrism and correlationism, each of which has come under severe and sharp criticism by the French-Continental philosophers, Jacques Derrida and Quentin Meillassoux. Their deconstructive or speculative philosophies serve to reveal what has been unexplored (or at least underexplored) in “Silence,” hence allowing an understanding of how widely open it is to what belongs outside of history and humanity. An attempt is ultimately made to demonstrate that the tale’s potentiality lies in its capacity to generate fresh perspectives not only on prehistory but also on pre-humanity and even on post-humanity.

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• The Speculative Nature of Things: "To Build a Fire" and Its Intellectual Narrative

  Masaomi Kobayashi

  Studies in English Literature ( 日本英文学会 )  ( 66 ) 19 - 35   2025年 [ 査読有り ]

  掲載種別: 研究論文（学術雑誌）

  　概要を見る

  The present essay aims to provide fresh insights into the intellectual narrative of Jack London’s 1908 best-known story, “To Build a Fire.” Given its least anthropocentric aspects, the story is certainly open to more recent movements than naturalism at the turn of the twentieth century. Particularly noteworthy among them is the novel movement of speculative realism, which is arguably most relevant to the speculative turn at the outset of the twenty-first century that directs focus toward things, living and nonliving alike. This intellectual movement furnishes an alternative to a certain humanism and its closest cousin, anthropocentrism. Herein lies why this essay makes reference to the speculative realist philosophers, Quentin Meillassoux and Graham Harman, who pursue their own approaches beyond humanism in relation to critiquing correlationism between mind and matter—i.e. thinking and being—as embodied by Immanuel Kant. With their explorations of speculative reality in mind, an attempt is thus made to uncover the thought-provoking narrative of “To Build a Fire.” The key figure in this attempt is not the main character but the third-person narrator who offers an omniscient point of view. The focus of this project shifts from numbers to objects: from the temperature degrees that transcend a range of typically human conditions to the snow that allows thinking beyond oneself to the tree that exists outside thought and to the fire that cannot be fully accessible to anyone nor anything. Throughout London’s rewriting of the story, these numbers and objects remain as things in their own right: their own realities are and will continue to be subject to speculation. As the universe of things is of intellectual nature, so is the world of London. If his work is constantly susceptible to intellectual movements, “To Build a Fire” is most illustrative of this very susceptibility. It is, after all, more than an early twentieth-century classic of naturalism. It is an ever-evolving narrative of the speculative nature of things.

• The Sciences and Beyond: On Nonhumanity in Moby-Dick

  Masaomi Kobayashi

  The Journal of the American Literature Society of Japan ( The American Literature Society of Japan )  22   1 - 18   2024年 [ 査読有り ]

  掲載種別: 研究論文（学術雑誌）

• Before and After Humanity: Dia-Chronicity in Moby-Dick's Chapter 104, "The Fossil Whale"

  Masaomi Kobayashi

  Kyushu American Literature ( 九州英文学研究 )  ( 41 ) 13 - 23   2025年01月 [ 査読有り ]

  掲載種別: 研究論文（学術雑誌）

  　概要を見る

  The present essay on Herman Melville’s 1851 classic, Moby-Dick, provides new insights into the novel’s nonhuman aspects that present themselves in the cetological chapters, particularly Chapter 104, “The Fossil Whale.” As declared by its subtitle, the novel deals with the nonhuman animal—“The Whale.” It was written less than a century after the Anthropocene began in the latter part of the eighteenth century, which fact suggests that it was the first major novel on nonhumanity in the age of humanity. From an evolutionary perspective, human history is much shorter than nonhuman history, and so is history of Homo sapiens than that of whales represented traditionally by Leviathan. Thus, Ishmael the narrator-speculator attempts to build his own cetology throughout the cetological chapters by incorporating a wide range of nonhumanities disciplines (e.g., geology and paleontology). In so doing, he furnishes an opportunity to look behind and beyond the human age. In particular, Chapter 104 finds him addressing the problem of what is called dia-chronicity—the concept of temporal discrepancy—which is concerned with the way in which to establish knowledge of the pre/post-human world as a time anterior or posterior to human existence. So unknowable is the whale that it leads him to voyage into the great outdoors of thought, where his speculation comes into active play. An attempt made in this essay is to gain an in-depth perspective on dia-chronicity that is certainly present in his speculative narrative of what is before and after humanity. The attempt is also intended to demonstrate this temporal concept’s applicability to other texts, notably such science-fiction masterpieces as John W. Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Chapter 104 is, after all, an exploration into unexplored corners of the discursive universe that lie before and after humanity.

• The Will to Matter: Captain Ahab, the Cyborg

  Masaomi Kobayashi

  Studies in English Literature ( 日本英文学会 )  61   21 - 35   2020年03月 [ 査読有り ]

  掲載種別: 研究論文（学術雑誌）

  　概要を見る

  The present study aims to cast fresh light on the cyborg-fiction aspects of Herman Melville’s 1851 classic, Moby-Dick. In so doing, it presents the novel as archetypal of cyborg fiction featuring those with artificial limbs. A specific focus is placed on the will-to-matter embodied by Captain Ahab. His prosthetic leg made of a whalebone has more often than not been viewed as an external manifestation of his monomaniacal nature. While his hostile challenge to the white whale as an inscrutable object demonstrates how emotionally-driven he has become since his last voyage, it is an idiosyncratic challenge to the longstanding domination of spirit over matter. When it comes to this complex figure with an acute consciousness of the inorganic part of his organic body, overemphasizing the power of spirit leads to deemphasizing the will to matter. Ahab’s human battle with the great white whale is closely associated with his posthuman/transhuman desire for self-enhancement. This paradoxical desire finds expression in his cyborg manifesto in which he envisions himself as a complete man—an augmented being with an enlarged brain but no heart. Ahab’s body—both disabled and imagined—is thus suggestive of how deeply humanity is interwoven with technology. His will-to-matter that exemplifies humanity-as-technology manifests itself finally in the Pequod. If Ahab is a cyborg, this whaleship is also a cyborg as an amplified projection of himself. Among the most central subjects in cyborg fiction is the transcendence of the limits of corporeality, and Ahab meets his fate when he attempts to immortalize himself by becoming something other than himself, something of an Ahab. This other-directedness is where the cyborg diverges from other posthuman/transhuman entities. The cyborg is not an autonomous being, and neither is Ahab. Moby-Dick is ultimately about his fatal journey to live immortally as the other.

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• The Multiverse of Office Fiction: Bartlebys at Work

  Masaomi Kobayashi ( 担当: 単著 )

  Palgrave Macmillan  2022年11月 ( ページ数: 225 )

  関連する研究費コード: 20K00390

• ユダヤ系文学の歴史と現在―女性作家、男性作家の視点から

  小林正臣 ( 担当: 単著 , 担当範囲: 自他をめぐる者たち―イーサン・ケイニンの世界 )

  大阪教育図書  2009年03月 ( 担当ページ: p.21 )

• 応答力をつけるリーディング

  喜納育江・小林正臣・山城新 ( 担当: 共著 )

  英宝社  2009年01月 ( ページ数: 102 )

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• 人類以前と人類以後――『白鯨』第104章「化石鯨」における隔時性

  小林　正臣

  日本英文学会九州支部第76回大会Proceedings ( 九州英文学会 )    2024年02月

   

  DOI

• やがて楽しき外国語（2014年プロフェッサー・オブ・ザ・イヤー受賞エッセイ）

  小林正臣

  琉球大学大学教育センター報 ( 琉球大学大学教育センター )  ( 17 ) 106 - 08   2014年09月

   

• ストーン・ローゼズ・ストーリー　誕生と、解散と、復活と。

  ジョン・ロブ 小林正臣・沢田太陽・藤波真矢 訳

  その他の掲載誌 ( 朝日新聞出版 )    2013年08月

   

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• プロフェッサー・オブ・ザ・イヤー

  2014年   琉球大学  

  受賞者: その他の受賞者

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• イシュメールたちの思弁的ナラティブ：新たな「スぺキュレイティブ・フィクション」論

  基盤研究(C)

  課題番号: 25K03928

  研究期間: 2025年04月  -  2029年03月 

  代表者: 小林正臣 

  直接経費: 1,500,000（円）  間接経費: 450,000（円）  金額合計: 1,950,000（円）

  　概要を見る

  本研究は、「人新世」に象徴される人間中心主義から脱却する一つの試みとして、人知を超えたものをめぐる思弁的なナラティブを概念化し、アメリカ文学における新たな「スペキュレイティブ・フィクション」を探求する。そこで注目するのが『白鯨』における思弁的ナラティブの先見性である。鯨は人類の誕生以前からの存在ゆえに人類の消滅以後にも存在するであろうと、人知を超えた実在を思弁的に語るイシュメールは、脱人間中心主義を端的かつ雄弁に体現している。よって、この人物の思弁的ナラティブを核にして、イシュメールたちの新たな「スペキュレイティブ・フィクション」を発見し、アメリカ文学を通じた脱人間中心主義の展望を導き出す。

• エイハブたち：「ポストヒューマン」の諸相

  基盤研究(C)

  課題番号: 20K00390

  研究期間: 2020年04月  -  2024年03月 

  代表者: 小林　正臣 

  直接経費: 1,300,000（円）  間接経費: 390,000（円）  金額合計: 1,690,000（円）

  　概要を見る

  本研究は以下の３点について明らかにする。 １）「ポストヒューマン」として提示される人類の多様な進化形に注目することで、それがどのようにエイハブという多義的な人物に体現されているのか。 ２）「ポストヒューマン」としてのエイハブを元型とすることで、それがどのように〈エイハブたち〉として以後のアメリカ文学やポピュラー映画に出現しているのか。 ３）「ポストヒューマン」の諸相を体系的かつ系統的に検討することで、それをどのようにポストヒューマニズムの問題と展望として提示できるのか。

• バートルビーたち：「オフィス・フィクション」の諸相

  基盤研究(C)

  課題番号: 16K02496

  研究期間: 2016年04月  -  2020年03月 

  代表者: 小林　正臣 

  直接経費: 1,600,000（円）  間接経費: 480,000（円）  金額合計: 2,080,000（円）

• 現代ユダヤ系アメリカ文学における「ポスト・ホロコースト」の諸相に関する基礎的研究

  若手研究(B)

  課題番号: 22720105

  研究期間: 2010年04月  -  2012年03月 

  代表者: 小林　正臣 

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