Overview

Eigenvalue provides the first history of 'eigenvalue' by building an important bridge between the hard and the soft sciences. Originally a mathematical term, Hanjo Berressem applies Eigenvalue, which roughly translates to proper value, to the media studies discipline for the first time, providing a philological history and line of development across the sciences through to contemporary cultural studies. Berressem's groundbreaking work is organized into 2 books, with the first book broken down into six topical areas - mathematics, physics, cybernetics, biology, literary studies, cultural studies. The second book discusses the place of eigenvalues in sound, light and literature, specifically, Alvin Lucier’s experimental composition “I am Sitting in a Room,” Bill Morrison’s eight-minute experimental film Light is Calling and the literary works of Thomas Pynchon. Berressem's thought-provoking philology is an important reference point for readers seeking an authoritative introduction to a term that connects other key ideas in contemporary debate.

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9781501363177

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What comes to replace and improve upon the idea of identity for a world of emergence, flux and multiplicity? What is the reference point for self-regulating processes in our complex systems? The answer is eigenvalues. In this exemplary work of study between disciplines, where science and art meet and cross-pollinate, Hanjo Berressem has given us the most thorough and inspirational explanation of one of the hidden keys to modern life. --James Williams, Honorary Professor of Philosophy, Deakin University, Australia Hanjo Berressem's Eigenvalue is a bold new approach to the theory of the technological and the political unconscious, one that is not centered on the individual. Eigenvalue is structured as two explorations in book form - one on science, and one on literature. Ranging across quantum physics, cybernetics, and chaos theory in the first book, to Alvin Lucier on the acoustic unconscious, Bill Morrison on the visual unconscious, and Thomas Pynchon on narrative literature in the second, Professor Berressem both illustrates the resonance across science and poetics and develops extremely important new theoretical contributions to studies of the unconscious. --David Holdsworth, Associate Professor, Trent School for the Environment, Canada

Author Information

Hanjo Berressem is Professor of American Literature at the University of Cologne, Germany. His publications include Pynchon’s Poetics: Interfacing Theory and Text and Lines of Desire: Reading Gombrowicz’s Fiction with Lacan.

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