Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Department of English
Document Type
Dissertation
Abstract
This dissertation studies the metaphysics of time and rhetoric in the science fiction novels Dune (1963) and God Emperor of Dune (1981) by Frank Herbert. The first chapter critiques the protagonist’s sense of temporality, an ideology in which the future consists of multiple possible choices while each decision of one forecloses a still larger set. Jean-Pierre Dupuy calls this a “supermarket” model of temporality, as if the future were a contingent-free menu of possibilities a subject is free to pick between. My assertion is that this sense of temporality—the Western norm—matches the protagonist’s, Paul Atreides’s, rhetoric. In disclosing Paul’s sense of temporality, we gain a way to immanently critique Paul’s ethics, discovering both his sensual preponderance for, rhetorical failure of, and potential solution in, the ancient Greek notion of kairos: “the opportune time,” or a rhetorical device signifying the timeliness of an intervention. Paul’s rhetoric, in other words, contains a pattern of metaphors indicative of how he senses time, and this sense of time helps determine his tragic actions. A critique of temporality leads to a disclosure of Paul’s ethics and, more importantly, a critique of a dangerous cultural norm. The dissertation’s next part, covering God Emperor of Dune, concerns representation and its limits. It seeks a rhetorical thread or pattern connecting these two novels and finds it in Paul’s refusal to face truth his son, Leto II, knows about language. This project deconstructs the novel through close reading, discovering it pivots around Frank Herbert’s neologism “Siaynoq,” connoting mystery, prestige, and power. My thesis in this chapter is that Leto II, Paul’s son turned emperor, puts forth a Hamletian diatribe against argumentation, hoping to deconstruct reason (logos) itself while lamenting his long life. Upon reaching the apogee of human language’s potentiality in this term “Siaynoq,” however, I contend that the melodrama can only end with his death. Finally, in my third chapter, I investigate the oath as a social bond capable of both warding off and instigating the worst of disasters, primarily as a response to Giorgio Agamben’s The Sacrament of Language: An Archaeology of the Oath (2010).
Date
3-18-2025
Recommended Citation
Busshart, Garrett J., "The Metaphysics of Frank Herbert's Dune and God Emperor of Dune: On Time and Language" (2025). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 6695.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/6695
Committee Chair
Pallavi Rastogi
