ABSTRACT
IN LEWIS CARROLL’S WONDROUS Through the Looking Glass, Alice finds herself in a country ruled by the Red Queen, a place that challenges Alice’s assumption about progress. Rather than actually moving from point A to point B upon running fast, Alice finds herself where she began, a very strange occurrence indeed to someone coming from a perspective in which running implies movement across time and distance. A brief exchange between Alice and the Red Queen highlights their incompatible Weltanschauungen:
This phenomenon, referred to as the “Red Queen effect,” subverts our traditionalnotionofprogress,abroadworldviewinheritedfromtheEnlightenment. The Red Queen forces us to reflect on these principles as well as the empirical reality of contemporary life in which so many people in America struggle to keep pace in economic (Blackburn, Bloom, and Freeman 1989), social (CaseandKatz1991), andpolitical life (Verbaet al.1993).
