Katharine Breen · 2021 · EPUB · Calibre ID 13964
Resurfaced in The Averaged Self (2026-09-27).
Role in the triad
The machine described: the theory of personification as a tool of thought, with a typology keyed to the universals debate that places the other two books.
Why this book
Gives exact terms for Folly (daemonic, ‘faintly ridiculous’) and Plume (nominalist puzzle); its opening persona ‘Antonella’, aggregated from data, is the mechanism Michaux later finds in his own self.
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- “personification is as personification does” (Intro, p. 9)
- “Where novels often create an illusion of individuation through an accumulation of nonsignifying details, personifications are instead composed of exemplary or characteristic details.” (p. 2)
- “it may be more accurate to think about it as a design engine, or even a form of artificial intelligence” (p. 4)
- “nominalist personifications do not represent universals as much as they prompt readers to conceptualize them. They tend to be puzzles or enigmas, engaging readers through their incongruity rather than through visionary imagery or verisimilar detail.” (p. 24)
- “Daemonic personifications, in contrast, are much less authoritative and can even be faintly ridiculous.” (p. 23)
- “In later texts, it also illuminates the phenomenon of persons turning themselves into personifications.” (p. 25)
- Excerpt pp. 5–6 (Gregory’s machina)
Themes
allegory as machine · habitus · nominalism · persona · persona design · personification · prosopopoeia · universals