The Effects of Binary Thinking in the Arts and Humanities

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2024) | Viewed by 1295

Special Issue Editor

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Guest Editor
Department of English, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA
Interests: modern drama; film studies; modernist fiction (British; American; French); feminist criticism; gay and lesbian literature; media studies; medical humanities
* retired from Rice University

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

What are the effects of the recent re-emergence of binary oppositional thinking on contemporary literature and literary criticism? Reflecting the off/on operations of calculating machines, this recent surge of binary thinking often carries, in addition to its graphic divisions, political and ethical judgments attached to the interpretive reductions of oppositional sides. Grounded in the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato, the dualisms of Eastern yin/yan, Cartesian mind/body dualisms, and more recently in structuralism and the dialectical materialism of Marxist thought,

has the energetic re-emergence of binary modes of thought influenced the styles and topics of contemporary literary works? What does the reduction into binaries do to conceptions of the aesthetic? Has it altered the methods and goals of literary criticism? Does creating or analyzing literature from the assumption that all is divided into binary oppositions tend to reproduce those oppositions? Has such thinking reconstructed literature as a political battleground and the site of moral lessons and ethical propriety? In what ways has such an approach shifted or improved literary production and study? 

Prof. Dr. Judith Roof
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • binary
  • digital
  • oppositions
  • narrative
  • literature
  • art

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

12 pages, 188 KiB  
Article
Cultivating Complexity in an Age of Digital Dominance and Binary Oppositional Thinking
by Amy Nolan
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 45; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030045 - 28 Feb 2025
Viewed by 404
Abstract
The work represented in the following essay explores meaning-making in the context of creating in a digitally saturated culture. The digital imperative, with its binary oppositional structure (ones and zeroes), has increasingly asserted itself as the only option, from learning management systems (LMSs) [...] Read more.
The work represented in the following essay explores meaning-making in the context of creating in a digitally saturated culture. The digital imperative, with its binary oppositional structure (ones and zeroes), has increasingly asserted itself as the only option, from learning management systems (LMSs) to nearly all financial transactions, to the deepening gulfs between very rich and very poor, to increased extremes in left- and right-wing politics, and has deepened an already-entrenched binary oppositional thinking in creativity, nature, identity, and how we imagine the future itself, i.e., the extinction ending versus the techno-utopia. Binary oppositional thinking persists when people want simple, direct answers to complex questions. We are living in such a time when anxiety and grief over climate change have left many people with deep uncertainties about the future. How might an embrace of complexity and creativity help us transmute binary oppositional thinking in the face of these challenges? Through personal and scholarly narrative, this study addresses this question through an exploration of narrative experiences. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Effects of Binary Thinking in the Arts and Humanities)
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