The Pattern Nexus: Postdigital Aesthetics, Technoscience and Mysticism in Tom McCarthy’s The Making of Incarnation and Beyond

According to computational literary scholar Franco Moretti, pattern is a “great keyword of our times.” This article analyzes the continuous fascination with pattern as a trope and figure in the novelistic oeuvre of Tom McCarthy. It focuses on the creation of an overdetermined pattern nexus in McCarthy’s most recent novel, The Making of Incarnation (2021), showing that this work ambiguously conjoins three different figurations of “pattern”: pattern as marker of a late modern and postdigital surface aesthetic that affirmatively pits the formal rigor of geometric arrangements against humanist notions of subjectivity; pattern as a key term of contemporary technoscience that critically reflects the ominous societal impact of automated pattern recognition and algorithmic control; and, finally, pattern as a mystical cipher of order and connection that embodies the longing for a deeper unity behind the inextricable complexity of the phenomenal world. The article tracks the intertextual resonances of this overdetermined nexus with the pattern imagery in McCarthy’s previous novels, Satin Island and Remainder, and with historical and contemporary pattern discourses more broadly. It thereby offers a new perspective on the current allure of patterns in postdigital culture, science, and scholarship as well.