Philipp Tvrdinić, M. A.

Doctoral Project

Stanisław Lem und die Kybernetik

Stanisław Lem and Cybernetics

The dissertation project aims to combine different methodical approaches (Michel Foucault’s discourse analysis, Joseph Vogl’s “poetology of knowledge,” and Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory) in order to examine the relationship between literature and science (or knowledge) in the early fictional and theoretical works (roughly from 1956 to 1980) of the dominant figure of Polish science fiction – Stanisław Lem (1921–2006). Lem made the “science” of cybernetics – which originated partly in Norbert Wiener’s antiaircraft research during World War II, and took off globally after 1945, fueled by utopian hopes of bridging the gap between the “Two Cultures,” only to ultimately lose its relevance as a “discipline” in the late 1970s – his poetological basis. Crucially, cybernetics established a new interdisciplinary paradigm, centering around a powerful analogy: The control of a machine (e.g. of a thermostat) is based on a process of feedback which uses an information input (room temperature) to generate an output (either turn the heating unit on or off) – and this feedback process is structurally similar to the information or communication processes that govern the interactions of humans and other living organisms with their environment – from the single cell to the whole of society. In this way, cybernetics marks an epistemic rupture with wide-ranging implications or possibilities which Lem makes the focus of many of his theoretical and literary thought experiments. Special attention is paid to the way in which Lem’s texts not only reflect the new paradigm of cybernetics, but are also participating in the formation, stabilization, and possibly the critique of the order of knowledge of the – as Lem christened it in the subtitle of his Cyberiada [= The Cyberiad] (1965) – "cybernetic age."

Curriculum Vitae

Philipp Tvrdinić studied Literature-Arts-Media and Philosophy at the University of Constance with an additional stay at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków/Cracow. In March 2016, he earned his master’s degree in East European Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilian’s University Munich, writing a thesis under the supervision of Prof. Raoul Eshelman in which he investigated the cultural function of the monster as a regulative fiction of gender norms in the short stories and fantasy novels of the so-called Witcher Saga by Andrzej Sapkowski and in its tripartite role-playing video game adaptation The Witcher I–III by CD Projekt RED. In November 2016, he began his doctoral studies at the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies where Prof. Riccardo Nicolosi is his doctoral supervisor.

Positions, Assignments and Memberships

• Member of the Study Group "Literature - Narrativity - Discourse"
• Deputy Doctoral Student Representative of the Graduate School

Awards

• Wissenschaftlicher Förderpreis des Botschafters der Republik Polen für die Masterarbeit "Das Monster als Figur des Dritten. Andrzej Sapkowskis Wiedźmin [= Hexer] in Prosatexten und Computerspielen" (Frankfurt/Oder, 13.12.2017).

Presentations (selected)

2018

"Kybernetische Grotesken bei Stanisław Lem" (13. Studientag "Literatur- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte", Berlin, 29.07.2018)

2017

"Stanisław Lem - Übervater der polnischen Science Fiction" (Deutsch-Polnische Gesellschaft München e.V., München, 27.11.2017).

"Stanisław Lem und die Kybernetik" (SPIM-Kolloquium, München, 30.06.2017).

"Stanisław Lem and Cybernetics" (Interdisciplinary Workshop “Cultural Orders”, München, 06.-09.06.2017).

"Stanisław Lem und die Kybernetik" (Internationale und interdisziplinäre fachwissenschaftliche Konferenz „Kosmos Lem. Zivilisationspoetik, Wissenschaftsanalytik und Kulturphilosophie“, Darmstadt, 02.-05.03.2017).

"Stanisław Lem und die Kybernetik" (Promotionskolleg Polen und Deutschland im modernen Europa, München, 16.01.2017).

"Stanisław Lem und die Kybernetik" (4. Kongress Polenforschung „Grenzen im Fluss“, Frankfurt [Oder]/Słubice, 23.-26.3.2017).