Joakim Wrethed

Oases of Air: a Phenomenological Study of John Banville's Science Tetralogy Joakim Wrethed

Oases of Air is a study of constitution in four novels by the Irish writer John Banville - Doctor Copernicus, Kepler, The Newton Letter, and Mefisto. As intriguing source of phenomenalisation, air possesses a perplexing autonomy in the science tetralogy. Indistinguishable from the process and reality of constitution, air tends to dissolve any firm line of demarcation between the thing discovered and the phenomenon of dicovery. Prior to all constituted things in the texts, and in their imaginative fields, air is synonymous with phenomenological intentionality understood as a basic directedness anterior to the difference between the subjective and the objective. The investigation studies air in terms of its aseity. It has a life of its own that cannot be explained by other phenomena. Interrogated in terms of the bold laws it makes for itself, Banville's extraordinary discourse turns out to be explorable as a wild, simmering domain teeming with substances that materialise out of air's nothingness.