The Logic of Possibility: On the Concept of Deus Ex Machina

While the deus ex machina—the “God in the machine”—began as a formal and explicit procedure in Classical drama and has, in this capacity, become more invisible in subsequent literature, it lives on as a deeply embedded structure in many literary and philosophical texts. This dissertation examines the deus ex machina in two modes: a flagrant, scandalous literary device and a hidden structure in argumentation, philosophy, and theory. In Chapter One, I look at the history of the deus ex machina. I offer several examples of its appearances in books, movies, plays, and video games, among other media. Then, I examine criticism and defenses of the device. Existing scholarship tends to justify the deus ex machina by its ability to conclude a narrative either mechanically or thematically. I suggest that it may be justified by its very insufficiency. In Chapter Two, I examine the device’s status as a representation of the unrepresentable. I suggest that the deus ex machina may function as an acknowledgement or a symptom of Jacques Lacan’s Real dimension. In Chapter Three, I explore the (im)possibility of the deus ex machina through the philosophy of Kant, Sartre, and Hegel. I conclude it’s not simply that the impossible happens—that we must allow for the possibility of impossibilities—but that the impossible is where necessity fails. The deus ex machina may allow us to confront this idea. In the final chapter, I look at the literary stakes of the device in comedies and tragedies. A “good” deus ex machina establishes a universe in which the ways that the audience expects reality and teleology to function don’t hold. Otherwise, the device immanently fails because the audience will immanently recognize the impossibility of the human author breaking with causality-as-such.