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City University of New York (CUNY)

Dissertations and Theses

Self-consciousness

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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

"The Hazards Of Being Free": Thinking About Not Thinking In Infinite Jest, Josh Cunningham Jan 2019

"The Hazards Of Being Free": Thinking About Not Thinking In Infinite Jest, Josh Cunningham

Dissertations and Theses

This paper is about self-consciousness and how it figures in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Because Infinite Jest is such a large novel (1079 pages, including the indispensable footnotes), it serves, like other large novels before it, as a kind of encyclopedia of contemporary culture. The novel, in large part, treats self-consciousness—a distinctly human phenomenon, one which certainly accounts for our dominance as a species—as a problem (on both an individual and collective level) that needs to be overcome. This is because, as it turns out, self consciousness, when it becomes epidemic, is as much a boon as it …


The Will To Change: The Role Of Self-Consciousness In The Literature Of Metamorphosis, Michael Giovanniello Jan 2015

The Will To Change: The Role Of Self-Consciousness In The Literature Of Metamorphosis, Michael Giovanniello

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.