عنوان

Worlds unbound: Cybernetics and the arabesque

Number

TL47950

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

Worlds unbound: Cybernetics and the arabesque

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Haitham Ibrahim

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Meltzer, Francoise

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

The University of Chicago

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2014

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

266

Text of Note

Committee members: Hansen, Mark B. N.; Jagoda, Patrick

Text of Note

Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-321-22398-9

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Discipline of degree

Comparative Literature

Body granting the degree

The University of Chicago

Text preceding or following the note

2014

Text of Note

My dissertation project focuses on the history of cybernetics and aesthetics as a key site for the comparative study of cultural exchange between Arabic and American cultures. I argue that the emergence of cybernetics in the post-WWII era provided an infrastructure for a synthesis of Arabic and American aesthetic traditions, centering on the arabesque as a key aesthetic form driving this synthesis. The arabesque gained importance with the transformation of the technological media environment of American societyin the 1950s and 60s, when computational machines were first introduced. I contend that the arabesque form proved highly relevant for providing a formal description of the recursive systems cybernetics studied (also known as self-organizing systems), regardless of whether these systems existed in nature, technology, or society. Cybernetic notions, such as feedback and information, self-organization and emergence, could be correlated with the recursive forms found in the Arabic aesthetic tradition because the arabesque offered suitable aesthetic forms for the emerging post-human age that appeared with the cybernetic paradigm.

Comparative literature; Middle Eastern literature; American literature; Aesthetics; Feedback; Recursion; Narratives; Arabic language; Ontology; Novels; Colonialism; Cybernetics

Subject Term

Language, literature and linguistics;Philosophy, religion and theology;Cybernetics;Herbert, frank;Media studies;Pynchon, thomas;Systems theory;U.s. and arab mideast

Nash, Afaf

Meltzer, Francoise

Subdivision

Comparative Literature

The University of Chicago

Call Number

1619358101; 3638596

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y