Triangulate: Literature and the Sciences Mediated by Computing Machines - Archive ouverte HAL
Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2021

Triangulate: Literature and the Sciences Mediated by Computing Machines

Yves Citton

Résumé

For centuries, the emergence of "literature" and the emergence of "science" have run a parallel course, oppositional, symmetrical, but also intertwined, entangled around a functional solidarity. The (in)famous "two cultures" needed each other to define themselves-often repetitively, and pointlessly 1. Something, however, has thrown a wrench into this well-rehearsed debate since the 1940s: let's call it "computing machines." They write and they think, don't they? Just like literary folks, although not quite. They calculate and test and verify, don't they? Just like scientists, although differently. Since the advent of "deep learning," a.k.a. "machine learning," they even generate hypotheses: hypotheses fingunt, belying Newton who pretended not to, and mimicking fiction writers and theorists, who thought they were so quintessentially human. The (rather slow) emergence of computing machines upsets the traditional boundaries between literature and the sciences: it reveals deeper solidarities between them, as well as new contrasts. This article suggests that we may gain a better understanding and a firmer grasp on their present and future developments if we move from a cultural logic based on the binary opposition between two modes of knowledge (scientific vs. literary) to one that emerges from the triangulation of three forms of intelligence (scientific, literary, computational). A couple of preliminary remarks about the status of what will be addressed as "Literature" in the following pages may prevent misunderstandings. Even if I have been "teaching literature" for more than three decades, on both sides of the Atlantic, I feel increasingly unable to define what the word "literature" may mean nowadays. Nor do I even know whether it ought to be used at all. I start my "Introduction to Literary Studies" undergraduate course by sharing my discomfort with my students: I ask them what they enjoy reading, viewing, practicing or listening to, and I tell them that whatever they will bring to class as enjoyable will be considered "literature" by my standards. This is the only literary way to teach literature I have been able to come up with. While I am confident that I might defend theoretically such an unorthodox (non-)definition of "literature," I understand the reader may find it unsettling, as we are about to set off for an assessment of the relative virtues and domains of the sciences, computation and literature. My point will be that it is of the essence of "literature" to question the meanings of the signs it uses, including those it needs to define itself and its function. Three implications follow, however, which need to be acknowledged upfront. First, I will include literary studies (and not only literary creations) within the category of "literature," as one of its possible forms of experience. Second, I tend to treat the disciplinary specificity of "literature" as providing a platform of in(ter)disciplinary cross-pollination, and I tend to consider the "humanities" as reflexive modes of interpretation-which leads to a constant overlapping (and potential convergence) between literature and the humanities at large (see Citton 2010). Third, and more disturbingly, since scientific discourse or experiments, as well as computational adventures, can be claimed as enjoyable by my students-binding me to integrate them into my rather generous definition of "literature"-all the dichotomies discussed below between science, computation and literature will be provisional at best. I
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hal-04011120 , version 1 (02-03-2023)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04011120 , version 1

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Yves Citton. Triangulate: Literature and the Sciences Mediated by Computing Machines. Springer. The Palgrave Handbook of Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Literature and Science, Springer, p. 97-115., 2021. ⟨hal-04011120⟩
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