Mise en Abyme || The Observer Effect
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“…we can observe an object only by letting it interact with some outside influence. An act of observation is thus necessarily accompanied by some disturbance of the object observed.”
—P. A. M. Dirac
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The act of regarding an entity influences this entity.
STEM
The act of observing a system disturbs this system.
Literature
The act of reading a text at the instance of mise en abyme changes this text.
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An evocation of infinite regression.
An entity contains a complete replica of itself.
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Analogous motifs in the storyline: self-fulfilling prophecy, e.g., reading about a thing makes that thing happen
Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude
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Analogous arrangements in narrative structure: the instance of infinite regression affects the text extradiegetically, that is, it affects the text for the reader
Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude
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Trauvitch, Rhona. “Mise en Abyme and Quantum Mechanics: The Reader as Observer.” Interface between Literature and Science: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to Latin American Texts, edited by Victoria Carpenter, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, pp. 115-140.
