CONSCIOUSNESS

208 6. Culture and the Humanities
contribute peripherally to the conference themes of mind wandering, unconscious processing,
body consciousness and self and transformation. I have presented the bulk of the sequence at
a conference held by the Irish Astrological Association, and was pleased to receive general approbation
for the relevance of the material and the appropriateness of the sequential arrangement.
I am an Irish poet with four well-received published collections. In Ireland I am well
known for my dramatic performances, and I have also performed in Great Britain, Europe and
the U.S. I have written three novels, containing themes of altered states, confused perceptions
and emotional disturbance. I have just completed the first book in a planned four-volume story
for teenagers, the premise of which is that we create an immaterial, but real world with our
thoughts. My interest in the subject of consciousness arises from my own confusions about
reality, perception and notions of the true. I am also engaged by the subjects of free will and
guilt. The astrological chart would seem to deny free will, as does my life experience. I seek
the science. My website is at (www.maighreadmedbh.ie) “Maighread Medbh is well known as
a unique performance poet. Her combination of verbal panache, vital delivery, iconoclasm and
incisiveness has been much remarked.” (Nessa O’Mahony, poet, Dublin) S3
6.1 Literature and hermeneutics
317 The Contemporary Neurological Narrative in Fiction and Autobiography (English
and French Speaking Literatures) Herve Lambert (Faculty
Of Humanities, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan)
Relations between literature and neurology are almost consubstantial since Charcot’s
enormous influence. Some writers related autobiographical aspects of neurological syndromes
and epilepsy has been the most described neurological syndrome in literature. On the other
side, neurologists like the Russian Luria, Oliver Stacks’ model, wanted to keep on presenting
neurological cases with a literary style inherited from the XIXth century masters. Today with
neurosciences expansion, literature shows a neurological turn and a special interest for neurological
syndromes. Knowledge about synesthesia dramatically improved in the last years and
a lot of novels narrate the transformation of what had been previously endured as a hidden
condition. Capgras syndrome is the theme of Richard Powers’s The Echomaker Autism is the
theme of Mark Haddon’s Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Tourette?s syndrome
is the theme of Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn. We could also mention McEwan’s
Saturday about Huntington’s disease, Rivka Galchen’s Atmospheric Disturbances about Capgras
syndrome again, etc. Besides fictional narratives with neurological themes, exists a new
trend of autobiographical texts about neurological conditions, like with Patricia Lynne Duffy’s
Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens for synesthesia or with Daniel Tammett about autism (and
hypermnesia and synesthesia also!), or with Boris Cyrulnik about resilience, or Annie Ernaux
about Alzheimer, among other examples.This paper would like to draw a conceptual map of
the contemporary relations between neurology and neurogical fictional and autobiographical
narratives. This paper would like to draw a conceptual map of the contemporary relations
between neurology and neurogical fictional and autobiographical narratives. P12
318 Science Fiction and Consciousness Robert J. Sawyer
(Mississauga, Ontario Canada)
Robert J. Sawyer’s bestselling science-fiction novels have long explored issues of consciousness.
In this keynote, Sawyer will discuss the models of and theories about consciousness
he’s variously employed in novels such as FlashForward (and the ABC TV series based
on it, for which he is consultant and a scriptwriter), in which the consciousness of all human
beings is displaced forward in time for a period of two minutes; Mindscan, in which consciousness
is digitized and uploaded; Hominids, in which true self-aware consciousness arises
in Neanderthals; The Terminal Experiment, in which a biomedical engineer records the final
cessation of consciousness at death; Factoring Humanity, in which a technology is developed
that allows surfing of the collective unconscious; and his current WWW trilogy of Wake,
Watch, and Wonder, about the spontaneous emergence of consciousness in the World Wide
Web. Sawyer is one of only seven writers in history to win all three of the science-fiction