Michael Mack
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781474411363
- eISBN:
- 9781474418577
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474411363.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This 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. It examines how works ...
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This 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. 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, poststructuralist and deconstructive theory. Combining theory with literary criticism, the book sheds light on how overlooked aspects of 'the novels of Henry James, Herman Melville and H. G. Wells 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. Key Features Critically engages with some aspects of contemporary theory that keep propounding a Cartesian notion of the mind’s control over the body Analyses how key thinkers such as Spinoza, Benjamin, Pasolini and Freud attempt to re-evaluate what Agamben calls ‘bare life’ Offers original readings of Pasolini’s notion of scandalo in terms of contamination Alerts us to the ways in which some aspects of contemporary posthumanism may merely reproduce the dialects of inclusion and exclusion which is still premised on traditional notions of purity and immunityLess
This 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. 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, poststructuralist and deconstructive theory. Combining theory with literary criticism, the book sheds light on how overlooked aspects of 'the novels of Henry James, Herman Melville and H. G. Wells 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. Key Features Critically engages with some aspects of contemporary theory that keep propounding a Cartesian notion of the mind’s control over the body Analyses how key thinkers such as Spinoza, Benjamin, Pasolini and Freud attempt to re-evaluate what Agamben calls ‘bare life’ Offers original readings of Pasolini’s notion of scandalo in terms of contamination Alerts us to the ways in which some aspects of contemporary posthumanism may merely reproduce the dialects of inclusion and exclusion which is still premised on traditional notions of purity and immunity
Michael Mack
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781474411363
- eISBN:
- 9781474418577
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474411363.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The main part of the chapter moves from the mind-body opposition to the division between nature and society as analysed in Bruno Latour’s history of science. It discusses how oppositions between mind ...
More
The main part of the chapter moves from the mind-body opposition to the division between nature and society as analysed in Bruno Latour’s history of science. It discusses how oppositions between mind and body, the worldly and the other-worldly, nature and society, science and the arts have given rise to the modern as well as modernist concerns with invisibility. The term contamination makes us conscious of various mediations which Latour’s modern purification project has relegated to unconsciousness. The figure of contamination brings to the level of consciousness the fusion of the objective and the subjective, the visible and the invisible. The purity of either the theological or the secular disintegrates within both Luhmann’s system theory and Derrida’s project of deconstruction. Here the figure of purity gives way to the figure of contamination. The closing part of the chapter proposes that we understand Hannah Arendt’s notion of world and worldliness in terms of contamination. It discusses her critique of a purification project that empties our experience from any remainder of worldliness and how this is relevant for a better understanding of H G Well’s approach towards science.Less
The main part of the chapter moves from the mind-body opposition to the division between nature and society as analysed in Bruno Latour’s history of science. It discusses how oppositions between mind and body, the worldly and the other-worldly, nature and society, science and the arts have given rise to the modern as well as modernist concerns with invisibility. The term contamination makes us conscious of various mediations which Latour’s modern purification project has relegated to unconsciousness. The figure of contamination brings to the level of consciousness the fusion of the objective and the subjective, the visible and the invisible. The purity of either the theological or the secular disintegrates within both Luhmann’s system theory and Derrida’s project of deconstruction. Here the figure of purity gives way to the figure of contamination. The closing part of the chapter proposes that we understand Hannah Arendt’s notion of world and worldliness in terms of contamination. It discusses her critique of a purification project that empties our experience from any remainder of worldliness and how this is relevant for a better understanding of H G Well’s approach towards science.
