Abstract

Literature per se can utilize mathematical theorem to ease our epistemic search. Formulating the literary idea through the gaze of mathematical formula can clarify the role of signified without the reduplication of the original copy of truth. It shows that being is not a summum genus, it cannot be reached by taking genera over genera in an increasing order of continence. The ANT (Actor Network Theory) is, according to Harman ‘in the ontologically democratic position once occupied by phenomenology, but without that school’s excessive prioritizing of the observing human subject.’ (Immaterialism 61) he diffuses the difference of empirical power to human and non-human, nature and culture, real and imaginary. Now when Eliot is using Prufrock as the actor, he becomes an agency of post humanist philosophy because he is the part of the hell that he lives in. That is why the mathematical dimensions of his existence does not only performs the role of continuity but infinity. The relation between philosophy and mathematics is important to free historicism from being blinded to the empiricist cult of fact and causalist presumption and it is through mathematics we will understand that historicist geneticism is interrelated with that of psycho-geneticism and how historicity is the part of phenomenological time and this is what Husserl points out in his book Origin of Geometry (26-27). In this paper of mine I will discuss the poem ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ through various mathematical apparatus to show how time functions for Prufrock here and his time and space is a phenomenological topology where historical empiricism will broaden itself from the factual world of causalist presumption and deal with psycho-geneticism. I will also try to show that Eliot’s perception of Prufrock makes a bridge between humanism and posthumanism as he does not move in a single narrative of truth or idealism, but a bifurcation of reality and truth. Trapped in the ontological Time-space continuum, Prufrock cannot provide an epistemic denouement of his situation or find a consistent pattern to reality of existence rather he is walking up and down the Penrose stairs. He as a posthuman being cannot follow the clear path of prosaic truth or enter in the domain of poetic metaphors to solve the riddle of his existence. It is a Penrose stair, which presents a loop in time and therefore the time becomes infinite making the space an empty set which is not equivalent to zero. Prufrock cannot but keep travelling inside this infinite loop and so are we inside the poem; it is an architectural impossibility. When Prufrock is climbing the steps of the poem he is not merely ascending. Ascending is tied to descending as well. Therefore, there is a movement and but no displacement. That is why their journey is without the telos of getting out of this loop, effectively an empty set.