"It's got something to do with love" : the process and philosophy of communication in the work of David Foster Wallace

Abstract

Since David Foster Wallace’s death in 2008, a group of interested scholars has begun to emerge in the US and across Europe. This study forms part of that growing cluster of scholarship. It is the central contention of this thesis that Wallace developed a unique philosophy of dynamic communication. This mode of thinking combined the philosophy of language he encountered as a technical philosopher and the profound observational skill that marked him as a writer. This philosophy did not focus on discrete elements of communication - such as text, intent or interpretation - in literary, spoken or other forms of communication. Rather, Wallace outlines and investigates the elusive process by which these elements combine to give rise to meaningful communication - both within and without texts - in the aftermath of postmodernist cynicism.