Contaminations: Beyond Dialectics in Modern Literature, Science and Film

ISBN-13: 9781474411363 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 240 str.

Michael Mack

Opis

"Whereas dialectics separates two entities and traverses from one to the other (finally negating negation), contamination allows for the simultaneous interdependence of what has previously been conceived as separate or opposed. The book enquires into the problem of various oppositions between pure entities such as nature and society, body and mind, science and the arts, subjectivity and objectivity, action and contemplation, the sacred and the profane. It examines how works of literature and cinema have contaminated constructions of the pure and the immune with their purported opposite. As an advanced critical introduction to the figure of contamination, the book makes explicit what so far has remained unarticulated-what has only been implied-within postmodern and poststructuralist, and deconstructive theory. Combining theory with literary criticism, the book sheds light on how overlooked aspects of Henry James's, H. Melville's and H. G. Wells's novels question notions of natural order as well as an opposition between the subjective and the objective. It offers fresh readings of classic films and literary texts, including Vertigo and Moby Dick, with the aim to ground theoretical insights in close analysis."

Spis treści

Introduction: Climate Change and the Contamination of the Anthropocene; 1. Contaminating Psychology with Biology: Descartes, Spinoza, Freud, and Žižek; 2. Contaminating the Visible with the Invisible: from Einstein via H. G. Wells to Hannah Arendt, Luhmann and Derrida; 3. Contamination of Nature with Society: the collapse of natural order from Melville to Wells and Ellison; 4. Contaminating Judgement with its Suspension: Guilt and Punishment in Walter Benjamin, Herman Melville & Henry James; 5. Contaminating the Digital: Action & Perception in Henry James and Alfred Hitchcock; 6. Contaminating the Sacred with the Profane: Pier Paolo Pasolini and Bio-politics; 7. Contaminating Posthumanism.