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The deadline is approaching! A little less than 2 weeks left. Response, so far, has been great. Once again, I really encourage you who are reading this to submit something.
Some news: I’ll be presenting a paper at the SLSA annual conference this coming November. SLSA stands for Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. It’s an organization dedicated to interdisciplinary science studies. The conference will be held in Portland, Maine from the 1st to the 4th of November. The SLSA also publishes, in conjunction with Johns Hopkins University Press, a journal called Configurations . The plenary speakers will be N. Katherine Hayles and Brian Massumi; the theme of the conference, code. Last year’s theme was evolution, the plenary speaker Lynn Margulis. I attended some really interested talks, most notably, one given by Jesper Hoffmeyer on biosemiotics and another by Eric D. Schneider on thermodynamics and evolution. This year’s conference promises to be equally as interesting. Of course, I may find myself drowning in adrenaline for the duration.
The title of my paper : "Substantiating Strings: String Theory Popularizations and the Domestication of the Planck Scale" Here’s the abstract:
Invented in the late sixties, string theory has grown to dominate the field of theoretical physics by promising to reconcile Einstein’s general relativity, which describes the realm of the very large, with quantum theory, that of the very small. It posits the string as the basic constituent of both matter and energy: a tiny open or closed filament vibrating in multiple dimensions, whose tension determines the type of subatomic particle it manifests. The scale of the string is 10-33 centimeters, the Planck scale, a realm well beyond the capacity of contemporary particle collider technologies to plumb. Thus lacking in prospects for experimental validation, string theory currently stakes its legitimacy on its mathematical consistency. Simultaneously, since the late eighties, string theory popularizations—nonfiction texts authored primarily by string theorists themselves—have come out with increasing regularity. These popularizations aim to explain the theory to a lay audience, in part by introducing its key concepts stripped free of the constituting mathematics. Paradoxically then, since popularizations omit precisely the content that would grant the theory whatever scientific authority it hopes to claim, popularizations effectively present not physics but metaphysics, an imaginary that must resort to literary techniques to legitimize its objectivity. This paper will examine three examples of string images from popularizations and the strategies the texts employ to substantiate them. Using concepts from Gaston Bachelard and Michèle Le Doeuff, I argue that these string theory popularizations substantiate the string as an object through its contextualization within what I call a ‘domesticated mesocosm’, an imagined space that juxtaposes micro- and macrocosms by analogy through graspable objects on human scales, objects laden with affect. As such, these string theory popularizations transform the utterly alien into something approachably familiar.
Needless to say, I’m very excited about this first foray in public academia.
On another note, I’ve joined Paragraph NY , a writers’ collective founded by two New School MFA grads, Joy Parisi and Lila Cecil. It’s a great space on the third floor of a building on West 14th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. I’ve been going for the past three weeks and writing from 10 to 1, Monday through Friday, in keeping with Mundis’s regimen . It seems to be working out very well so far. It’s surprising how being productive can be relatively stress free.
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