The centre cannot hold: a translation of the cognitive nonconscious

The art of writing is to create order from language and to give language an order. It has often fell to be the novelist’s job to reflect what is, whether it be societal, political, or personal concerns. In the contemporary era, there has been a perceptible move to consistently capture what is not. The absence of presence, a lack of awareness – the proof of a gap, a glitch, a fault. The disruption of narrative is an admittance that the accessibility of language is no longer a necessity. In response to the developments of cognitive science, the role of literature has shifted as consciousness has been dethroned and the nonconscious has been given a language of its own. The intersection between the sciences and the arts is home to a potential for a rethinking of where the limits of language lie. This thesis puts together a contemporary canon of authors whose narratives are connected by similar modes of thinking that contribute to underscoring the idea of nonconscious cognition. The following authors all represent nonconscious processes, either through personifying the inaccessible, or by inhabiting the unacknowledgeable: Alena Graedon, Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi, Sarah Rose Etter, Tom McCarthy, Ian McEwan, Ben Lerner, Nicola Barker, Ali Smith, Edward St. Aubyn, Patricia Lockwood, Christine Smallwood, Richard Owain Roberts, and Jon McGregor. What connects the work of these authors is the rejection of consciousness as a privileged perspective into character. To bring together a collection of authors who all provide an authority for the nonconscious allows this research to move beyond literary theory and to extend into a rethinking of how language is being influenced in the contemporary age. This thesis is divided across five chapters that all explore a distinct cognitive process that is rooted in nonconsciousness, they also reference three novels each as evidence of how this can be translated into language. The thesis begins by exploring the role of the nonconscious in second language acquisition, then moves on to the areas of mind wandering, mind blanking, digitised forms of language use and finally, ends with an analysis of predictive processing. This thesis argues that nonconscious processes can be represented and exposed through language, and that it is the very act of writing itself that best demonstrates this.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

PhD

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Wolverhampton

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Worsdall, Lily May

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Groes, Sebastian
• Roberts, John

• nonconscious cognition
• consciousness
• mind wandering
• mind blanking
• prediction
• contemporary literature
• linguistics

Licence

• https://wlv.openrepository.com/bitstreams/4eb5ef21-cb1b-4696-a746-871aff7c8555/download