| This thesis discusses paranoia and schizophrenia in the speculative fiction (S.F.) of Philip K. Dick. My claim is that Dick's S.F. portrays paranoids as characters who are more than usually able to negotiate realities that are schizophrenic. Paranoids in Dick's S.F. are emblematic of internality, and of indeterminate and emotive subjectivity.;That is, Dick's paranoids generally perform a positive role and paranoia itself is assigned benevolent characteristics. Consequently, Dicks construction falls outside those current prominent literary and cultural paradigms that express both a negative view of paranoia and an ambivalence about subjectivity. Dick's idiosyncrasies in these areas may therefore point to a gap in the explanatory power of such current cultural and literary theories.;It is important, moreover, to read Dick within the context of his Gnostic and Zoroastrian motifs in order to appreciate his valuation of knowledge and interpretation as necessary and potentially positive components of human agency and in order to see Dick himself as the successful literary figure that he is, rather than as the figure of a failed poststructuralist or postmodernist. |
