論文 - 小林　正臣

Jack London, the Writer of a Speculative Turn: "To Build a Fire," or Things Outside Thought

Masaomi Kobayashi

Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory ( Johns Hopkins University Press )  82 ( 2 )   2026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 illuminates the speculative narrative of Jack London’s “To Build a Fire.” Given its least anthropocentric aspects, the story is open to more recent movements than naturalism at the turn of the twentieth century. Particularly noteworthy is speculative realism, which is arguably most relevant to the speculative turn at the outset of the twenty-first century. This movement furnishes an alternative to humanism and its cousin, anthropocentrism. Herein lies why this essay makes special reference to Quentin Meillassoux and Graham Harman. With their speculative-realist philosophies in mind, an attempt is made to uncover the thought-provoking narrative of “To Build a Fire.” This project brings sharp focus on a range of things, from numbers to objects, all of which are subject to speculation. London’s story is, after all, more than an early twentieth-century classic of naturalism. It is an ever-evolving narrative of the nature of things that will remain speculative.

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

Masaomi Kobayashi

Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory ( 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）

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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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Appreciation and Speculation: On the Aesthetic of Melville's "The Bell-Tower"

Masaomi Kobayashi

The Journal of the American Literature Society of Japan ( 日本アメリカ文学会 )  ( 23 ) 1 - 18   2026年 [ 査読有り ]

掲載種別: 研究論文（学術雑誌）

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.

Bartlebys: Gothicizing Office Fiction

Masaomi Kobayashi

Palgrave Communications ( Palgrave Macmillan )  4   1 - 6   2018年11月 [ 査読有り ]

掲載種別: 研究論文（学術雑誌）

関連する研究費コード: JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP16K02496

　概要を見る

Gothic fiction is in essence about the power of place, particularly of house. If this obsessive focus on the house is found in other genres of fiction, Gothic fiction can certainly expand its realm of representation; namely, the extensive capacity of this genre can be illustrated by unveiling the Gothic nature of the seemingly non-Gothic. Herein lies why special attention is given to the office as an idiosyncratic kind of house in office fiction: fiction featuring such characters as clerks, civil servants, and company employees. In Gothicizing office fiction, Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street” draws parallels with Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.” These classics of nongenre fiction have hardly been considered the classics of office fiction. The primary emphasis of this study is on the international kinship between Melville’s Bartleby and Kafka’s Samsa: Bartleby’s occupation of the law office turns the place into a house, and Samsa’s transformation into the monstrous vermin turns his apartment into an office. These dual settings render each protagonist uncanny and ghostly. The discovery of parallels between the protagonists who embody work-life integration stems from incorporating not only elements typical of the Gothic, such as supernatural happenings and closed-room settings, but also other elements, especially work-life balance. This focus on work-life issues allows an exploration of another classic office-fiction story about an Asian Bartleby. Thus, cultivating an environment in which Bartleby’s transnational cousins are rediscovered as Bartlebys lends itself to extending the scope of the Gothic. After all, Gothic fiction is an expanding universe in which the walls come tumbling down between office and house, between work and life, and even between the Gothic and the non-Gothic. The findings of this study highlight how every sphere of life, including work life, is potentially Gothicized.

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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.

Do the Electric Things Have Their Lives, Too? Philip K. Dick on Post-Humanity

Masaomi Kobayashi

American Research Journal of English and Literature ( American Research Journals )  5 ( 1 ) 1 - 11   2019年08月 [ 査読有り ]

掲載種別: 研究論文（学術雑誌）

関連する研究費コード: JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP16K02496

　概要を見る

What does it mean to be human? In his best-known novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick addresses this fundamental question through drawing parallels between natural and artificial beings. While conceiving humanity in relation to technology as an integral part of the posthuman condition embodied in human-machine relations, the novel sets in perspective the post-human condition under which post-modern technology actualizes viable machine-machine relations. Special attention is thus paid to the android characters, possibly including the bounty hunter protagonist, mass-produced by high-tech corporations as post-modern Prometheuses. With in mind the novel’s film adaptations that underscore its post-human aspects such as corporate personhood, this study affords insights into the author’s science fiction not only by providing an exploration of humanity, but also by expanding the universe of discourse of post-humanity

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Work in an Age of Post-Work: Ted Chiang and the Meaning of Life

Masaomi Kobayashi

Kyushu American Literature ( The Kyushu American Literature Society )  64   15 - 30   2023年11月 [ 査読有り ]

掲載種別: 研究論文（学術雑誌）

関連する研究費コード: JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20K00390

Steinbeck and Vegetarianism:An Ecocritical Perspective on The Grapes of Wrath.

Masaomi Kobayashi

The Journal of the American Literature Society of Japan ( 日本アメリカ文学会 )  4   1 - 17   2006年05月 [ 査読有り ]

掲載種別: 研究論文（学術雑誌）

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The Universe of the Office: Fight Club and Bartlebys

Masaomi Kobayashi

言語文化研究紀要 ( 琉球大学国際地域創造学部国際言語文化プログラム )  27   49 - 63   2018年11月

掲載種別: 研究論文（大学，研究機関紀要）

関連する研究費コード: JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP16K02496

　概要を見る

本稿はチャック・パラニューク(Chuck Palahniuk)のデビュー作であり、映画化もされた代表作『ファイト・クラブ』(Fight Club)を、ハーマン・メルヴィル「書写人バートルビー」(Bartleby, the Scrivener)に代表されるオフィス・フィクションとして読む。2001年の同時多発テロを予見していたとも読める本作は、資本主義に対する社会批判として読まれることが多い。会社員である無名の語り手は、満たされない精神を物質で満たすことができず、その反動として破壊衝動を満たすための集団ファイト・クラブを結成し、ついにはテロ集団へと変容させる。このように過激な内容と急激な展開を特徴とする一方、語り手の言動にはオフィスワーカーとしての日常が大きく関係していることはほとんど注目されてこなかった。例えば、彼のオフィスワークの一つにはプロジェクターを扱うことであるが、彼の分身であるタイラー・ダーデンも映写技師としてプロジェクターを扱う。あるいは、ファイト・クラブはタイラーの過激思想の影響下にあるが、この集団が組織として発展していくのは語り手が会社員という組織人であることが関係している。そして高層コンドミニアムを爆破してタイラーが設立した会社の事務所に住むのも、語り手がオフィスに居場所を求めようとする無意識の表れである。そして、自己に潜むタイラーを抹殺するために死を図った語り手は、天国らしき場所で覚醒し、ペンを片手にデスクに座る神らしき人物と対峙する。すなわち、死後の世界さえも生前のオフィスの延長のように描かれている。このように考えると、オフィスという空間に居続ける語り手は、書写人としての仕事を放棄しつつもオフィスに執拗に居続ける――それ以前も郵政省の下級職員というオフィスワーカーであったらしい――バートルビーの末裔であり、本作はオフィス・フィクションの系譜に属していることがわかる。かくして本稿は、アメリカ文学史に潜むバートルビーたちを発見する契機を提示しながら、オフィスという一般的な空間の特異性を考察する。

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Ecology of Everything: An Essay on Outside Possibilities

Masaomi Kobayashi

言語文化研究紀要 ( 琉球大学国際地域創造学部国際言語文化プログラム )  29   87 - 104   2021年10月

掲載種別: 研究論文（大学，研究機関紀要）

　概要を見る

全ては他の全てと関連している―それが一般的なエコロジーの第一原則である。本稿は、そのように全てを関連性の総体とする全体論を広義のエコロジーとして捉え、様々なエコロジーの外部を探求する。その際に文学作品に言及することで、フィクションが提示する外部性の可能性も見出す。第一に扱う全体論は、カント以来とされる相関主義―現実は意識と事物の相関による現象であると主張することで人間の思考の外部性を排除する主義―である。この哲学論に対して、意識に先立つ事物の存在から意識の外部を考えるのが思弁的実在論である。主唱者の一人であるカンタン・メイヤスーは、偶然性の必然性を説くことで思考に基づく相関性の外部性を指摘する。そして相関性を前面にした作品がアーネスト・ヘミングウェイの「何を見ても何かを思い出す」であり、対照的に偶然性を前面にした作品がポール・オースターの『最後の物たちの国で』である。つづく全体論は、人間中心主義としてのヒューマニズムである。この全体論は、IoT や AI の登場によって、その完全性を維持できなくなりつつある。そして P・K・ディックの代表作『電気羊はアンドロイドの夢を見るか？』におけるモノの世界は、まさに外部性を体現している。最後に扱う全体論は、歴史哲学者ユヴァル・ノア・ハラリが考察するデータ主義である。ビッグデータなどの膨大なデータにおいては、ヒトもモノも解析データとして一様に存在する。そして絶え間ないデータの流通を生命体として描いているのがドン・デリーロの『コズモポリス』である。データ主義を体現する主人公の死をもって終わる本作は、データ主義の外部性を象徴的に描く。かくして本稿は、「外部性の可能性」(outside possibilities) を発見することで、エコロジーとしての全体論を批判的に思考するための本来的な意味味における「わずかな可能性」(outside possibilities) を提示する。

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What Is the Man of the Crowd? His Prefiguration

Masaomi Kobayashi

九州英文学研究 ( 日本英文学会 )  ( 35 ) 1 - 9   2018年01月 [ 査読有り ]

掲載種別: 研究論文（学術雑誌）

関連する研究費コード: JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP16K02496

　概要を見る

The present study provides an exploration of Poe’s 1840 story, “The Man of the Crowd,” not by relying on the long-held view of the title character as the flâneur—the voyeuristic idler/stroller originally from mid-1830s Paris—but by answering an as-yet unasked question, “What—not who—is the man of the crowd?” This London-set semi-detective story is primarily characterized by its realistic reference to the street crowd as those with different jobs, and its most detailed description of clerks serves as a text within the text. Poe’s special interest in those office workers is thus addressed in close relation to Melville’s New York story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street.” Drawing specific parallels between their protagonists reveals the man of the crowd as a literary cousin of Bartleby. The man’s looks, behavior, and sense of locality furnish the key to the question of what he is or what he used to be. Of equal import is that the narrator as an obsessive reader of the crowd overlaps with the dead letter clerk who detects the identity of the sender from an undeliverable letter. Given both the narrator’s attention like an epistolary detective’s and his subject’s action like an ex-dead letter clerk’s, “The Man of the Crowd” can be conceived as an earlier story relevant to the creation of Bartleby—Bartleby not at the law office but at the Dead Letter Office. Through this extension made backward, not forward (which is the usual direction in diversifying Bartleby), Poe’s main characters, including C. Auguste Dupin, are rediscovered as transatlantic and prototypic figures of Bartleby. Overall, an attempt is made to throw fresh light upon office fiction featuring office-worker characters as Bartlebys.

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On Working and Writing: Post Office, or Charles Bukowski in Transition

Masaomi Kobayashi

Southern Review ( 沖縄外国文学会 )  32   53 - 67   2017年12月

掲載種別: 研究論文（学術雑誌）

広義の「英米文学」の講義：どのような作品を、どのような文脈で

小林　正臣

言語文化研究紀要 ( 琉球大学法文学部国際言語文化学科（欧米系） )  ( 26 ) 61 - 80   2017年10月

掲載種別: 研究論文（大学，研究機関紀要）

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Among the courses offered in the Departments of English Education and English Language and Culture at the University of the Ryukyus are Special Topics in English and American Literature I and II. The present essay explores how to put them in broad perspective by offering a selection of literary works in English. It refers to a variety of short stories not only by native speakers of English but also by others, including: The Brothers Grimm, Franz Kafka, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, and such national and/or international award-winning writers of Japan as Yasunari Kawabata, Mieko Kawakami, and Haruki Murakami. This paper underscores the need to contextualize the selected works in their own terms. Several examples of contextual reading are thus provided to illustrate literatures in English as an interconnected whole. The aim of the courses on English and American literature is, after all, to allow participants an opportunity to expand their horizons not only of literature, but also of its own time and space.

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Bartlebys Diversified: Miss Lonelyhearts and Office Fiction

Masaomi Kobayashi

The Journal of the American Literature Society of Japan ( 日本アメリカ文学会 )  14   39 - 55   2016年03月 [ 査読有り ]

掲載種別: 研究論文（学術雑誌）

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Charles Bukowski at Work : Post Office and the literature of Postal Service

Kobayashi Masaomi

英文学研究. 支部統合号 = Studies in English literature. 日本英文学会 編 ( 一般財団法人日本英文学会 )  7   299 - 307   2015年01月 [ 査読有り ]

掲載種別: 研究論文（学術雑誌）

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9/11, 3/11, and Groundless Ill Will: The World According to Haruki Murakami

Masaomi Kobayashi

Southern Review ( 沖縄外国文学会 )  27   171 - 75   2012年12月

掲載種別: 研究論文（学術雑誌）

"Anything Can Happen": "Paul Auster via Anna Blume

Masaomi Kobayashi

Kyushu American Literature ( 九州アメリカ文学会 )  53   63 - 76   2012年10月

掲載種別: 研究論文（学術雑誌）