Mary Shelley
David H. Guston, Ed Finn, Jason Scott Robert, Joey Eschrich, and Mary Drago (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262533287
- eISBN:
- 9780262340267
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262533287.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The editors provide a brief chronology of important dates in the history of science in the context of Mary Shelley’s life and important aspects of the novel.
The editors provide a brief chronology of important dates in the history of science in the context of Mary Shelley’s life and important aspects of the novel.
Benjamin Noys
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638635
- eISBN:
- 9780748671915
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638635.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Gilles Deleuze is the most explicitly and consistent affirmative thinker. This chapter analyses the origin of this orientation in his reading of Henri Bergson’s vitalism. The use of Bergson allows ...
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Gilles Deleuze is the most explicitly and consistent affirmative thinker. This chapter analyses the origin of this orientation in his reading of Henri Bergson’s vitalism. The use of Bergson allows Deleuze to positivise difference, but this comes at the expense of a more nuanced political and theoretical understanding of the forms of capitalist power. This chapter then attends to the elements of negativity that can be found in Deleuze’s engagement with aesthetics and politics, particularly in his reading of Marx. It suggests that there is another ‘political Deleuze’, attuned to negativity, which is contrary to the usual affirmative image of this thinker. In particular, it suggests that Deleuze offers a possibility of grasping the articulation of negativity with forms of political subjectivity.Less
Gilles Deleuze is the most explicitly and consistent affirmative thinker. This chapter analyses the origin of this orientation in his reading of Henri Bergson’s vitalism. The use of Bergson allows Deleuze to positivise difference, but this comes at the expense of a more nuanced political and theoretical understanding of the forms of capitalist power. This chapter then attends to the elements of negativity that can be found in Deleuze’s engagement with aesthetics and politics, particularly in his reading of Marx. It suggests that there is another ‘political Deleuze’, attuned to negativity, which is contrary to the usual affirmative image of this thinker. In particular, it suggests that Deleuze offers a possibility of grasping the articulation of negativity with forms of political subjectivity.
Benjamin Noys
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638635
- eISBN:
- 9780748671915
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638635.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Antonio Negri has presented one of the most convincing articulations of affirmation as necessary to the constitution of a radical communist politics. In this chapter his work on political ontology ...
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Antonio Negri has presented one of the most convincing articulations of affirmation as necessary to the constitution of a radical communist politics. In this chapter his work on political ontology and his vitalist politics of the powers of ‘Life’ as excess is critiqued through attention to the traces of the negative that remain. Focusing particularly on Negri’s work on art an engagement with the necessity of negation to the process of creation and production can be recovered from his work. Also, this chapter sharpens the critique of Negri’s recourse to an affirmative concept of the ‘multitude’ as political agent. While claiming a radical political agenda Negri’s theorisation remains problematically dependent on the capitalist categories – creation, production, the immeasurable – it aims to exceed.Less
Antonio Negri has presented one of the most convincing articulations of affirmation as necessary to the constitution of a radical communist politics. In this chapter his work on political ontology and his vitalist politics of the powers of ‘Life’ as excess is critiqued through attention to the traces of the negative that remain. Focusing particularly on Negri’s work on art an engagement with the necessity of negation to the process of creation and production can be recovered from his work. Also, this chapter sharpens the critique of Negri’s recourse to an affirmative concept of the ‘multitude’ as political agent. While claiming a radical political agenda Negri’s theorisation remains problematically dependent on the capitalist categories – creation, production, the immeasurable – it aims to exceed.
Raymond Malewitz
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780804791960
- eISBN:
- 9780804792998
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804791960.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter positions Thomas Pynchon's encyclopedic novel Gravity's Rainbow alongside recent models of human-object interactions such as biomimetics, actor-network theory, and new vitalism. ...
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This chapter positions Thomas Pynchon's encyclopedic novel Gravity's Rainbow alongside recent models of human-object interactions such as biomimetics, actor-network theory, and new vitalism. Pynchon's characters view the social histories of two important objects in the novel—the V-2 rocket and celluloid plastic—as either linear or circular. In the case of the former, objects are designed to maintain their structural integrity over time, which completely separates producers and consumers and, for Pynchon, catalyzes the environmental crisis of the late twentieth century. In the case of the latter, commodities, like natural materials, operate in a constant state of flux and thus have no singular use-value. This ecological model of an object's social life destabilizes the producer-consumer divide, reclaims the commodity as a site of creative re-production, and partially ameliorates the environmental crisis unleashed by industrial design procedures.Less
This chapter positions Thomas Pynchon's encyclopedic novel Gravity's Rainbow alongside recent models of human-object interactions such as biomimetics, actor-network theory, and new vitalism. Pynchon's characters view the social histories of two important objects in the novel—the V-2 rocket and celluloid plastic—as either linear or circular. In the case of the former, objects are designed to maintain their structural integrity over time, which completely separates producers and consumers and, for Pynchon, catalyzes the environmental crisis of the late twentieth century. In the case of the latter, commodities, like natural materials, operate in a constant state of flux and thus have no singular use-value. This ecological model of an object's social life destabilizes the producer-consumer divide, reclaims the commodity as a site of creative re-production, and partially ameliorates the environmental crisis unleashed by industrial design procedures.
Ohad Nachtomy and Justin E. H. Smith (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199987313
- eISBN:
- 9780199346240
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199987313.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
The present volume advances a recent historiographical turn towards the intersection of early modern philosophy and the life sciences by bringing together many of its leading scholars to present the ...
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The present volume advances a recent historiographical turn towards the intersection of early modern philosophy and the life sciences by bringing together many of its leading scholars to present the contributions of important but often neglected figures, such as Ralph Cudworth, Nehemiah Grew, Francis Glisson, Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente, Georg Ernst Stahl, Juan Gallego de la Serna, Nicholas Hartsoeker, Henry More, as well as more familiar figures such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Malebranche. The contributions to this volume are organized in accordance with the particular problems that living beings and living nature posed for early modern philosophy: the problem of life in general, whether it constitutes something ontologically distinct at all, or whether it can ultimately be exhaustively comprehended “in the same manner as the rest”; the problem of the structure of living beings, by which we understand not just bare anatomy but also physiological processes such as irritability, motion, digestion, and so on; the problem of generation, which might be included alongside digestion and other vital processes, were it not for the fact that it presented such an exceptional riddle to philosophers since antiquity, namely, the riddle of coming-into-being out of – apparent or real – non-being; and, finally, the problem of natural order.Less
The present volume advances a recent historiographical turn towards the intersection of early modern philosophy and the life sciences by bringing together many of its leading scholars to present the contributions of important but often neglected figures, such as Ralph Cudworth, Nehemiah Grew, Francis Glisson, Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente, Georg Ernst Stahl, Juan Gallego de la Serna, Nicholas Hartsoeker, Henry More, as well as more familiar figures such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Malebranche. The contributions to this volume are organized in accordance with the particular problems that living beings and living nature posed for early modern philosophy: the problem of life in general, whether it constitutes something ontologically distinct at all, or whether it can ultimately be exhaustively comprehended “in the same manner as the rest”; the problem of the structure of living beings, by which we understand not just bare anatomy but also physiological processes such as irritability, motion, digestion, and so on; the problem of generation, which might be included alongside digestion and other vital processes, were it not for the fact that it presented such an exceptional riddle to philosophers since antiquity, namely, the riddle of coming-into-being out of – apparent or real – non-being; and, finally, the problem of natural order.
Charles T. Wolfe
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199987313
- eISBN:
- 9780199346240
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199987313.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Diderot’s natural philosophy, which emerges some decades prior to the appearance of the term ‘biology’ in the 1790s, is profoundly ‘biologistic’. Both the metaphysics of vital matter in D’Alembert’s ...
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Diderot’s natural philosophy, which emerges some decades prior to the appearance of the term ‘biology’ in the 1790s, is profoundly ‘biologistic’. Both the metaphysics of vital matter in D’Alembert’s Dream and the more empirical concern with physiology in his unpublished Elements of Physiology display a fascination with the uniqueness of organisms. This ‘biologism’ presents Diderot’s interpreter with some difficulties, notably regarding his materialism, for contemporary forms of materialism reject emergence, vitalism, teleology or other appeals to biological irreducibility. Here I examine a little-known aspect of Diderot’s proto-biological project: his association of epigenesis with Spinozism in the short article “Spinosiste.” Why defend a particular developmental theory in an entry on Spinoza (who was barely concerned with the specific properties of organisms)? My response also addresses the relation of Diderot’s biological project to biology as a science that appeared after his death. Indeed, Diderot’s ‘epigenetic Spinozism’ stands conceptually outside the history of biology.Less
Diderot’s natural philosophy, which emerges some decades prior to the appearance of the term ‘biology’ in the 1790s, is profoundly ‘biologistic’. Both the metaphysics of vital matter in D’Alembert’s Dream and the more empirical concern with physiology in his unpublished Elements of Physiology display a fascination with the uniqueness of organisms. This ‘biologism’ presents Diderot’s interpreter with some difficulties, notably regarding his materialism, for contemporary forms of materialism reject emergence, vitalism, teleology or other appeals to biological irreducibility. Here I examine a little-known aspect of Diderot’s proto-biological project: his association of epigenesis with Spinozism in the short article “Spinosiste.” Why defend a particular developmental theory in an entry on Spinoza (who was barely concerned with the specific properties of organisms)? My response also addresses the relation of Diderot’s biological project to biology as a science that appeared after his death. Indeed, Diderot’s ‘epigenetic Spinozism’ stands conceptually outside the history of biology.
Andrew H. Clark (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251384
- eISBN:
- 9780823253029
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251384.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter examines the manner in which music was seen in the eighteenth century as a common good. In both religious and secular communities it was envisaged as a strategic means to effect and ...
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This chapter examines the manner in which music was seen in the eighteenth century as a common good. In both religious and secular communities it was envisaged as a strategic means to effect and potentially control the public (usually through its effect on a listening body) and to create a sense of shared sentiment, purpose, and citizenship. It explores the ways in which three well-known eighteenth-century Europeans who wrote on music and its effects—Denis Diderot, Johann Mattheson, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau—theorize dissonance in their social therapies and make music speak for specific sociopolitical goals or cures. For each, bodies possess a certain kind of musical instinct that makes them particularly responsive to music. Musical metaphors, such as “dissonance,” were harnessed to articulate and potentially control unspeakable forces and relations visible in animal and social bodies. Whereas writers such as Mattheson and Rousseau tried to minimize dissonance in their social therapies, others such as Diderot saw it as important.Less
This chapter examines the manner in which music was seen in the eighteenth century as a common good. In both religious and secular communities it was envisaged as a strategic means to effect and potentially control the public (usually through its effect on a listening body) and to create a sense of shared sentiment, purpose, and citizenship. It explores the ways in which three well-known eighteenth-century Europeans who wrote on music and its effects—Denis Diderot, Johann Mattheson, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau—theorize dissonance in their social therapies and make music speak for specific sociopolitical goals or cures. For each, bodies possess a certain kind of musical instinct that makes them particularly responsive to music. Musical metaphors, such as “dissonance,” were harnessed to articulate and potentially control unspeakable forces and relations visible in animal and social bodies. Whereas writers such as Mattheson and Rousseau tried to minimize dissonance in their social therapies, others such as Diderot saw it as important.
Jane Bennett
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251414
- eISBN:
- 9780823252923
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251414.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
In this chapter, Jane Bennett questions whether discourses of nature or second nature are capable of pressing us to attend to the “force of things.” Bennett argues that a “politics of vital ...
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In this chapter, Jane Bennett questions whether discourses of nature or second nature are capable of pressing us to attend to the “force of things.” Bennett argues that a “politics of vital materialism”–which she both draws and ultimately distinguishes from 19th and 20th century vitalism–may better challenge the “destructive fantasies of mastery” of American consumption and production practices. It does so, on Bennett's account, because rather than attending to “biocultural assemblages” as products of human action and agency–as she sees “second nature” discourse as doing–a politics of vital materialism marks the presence and power of non-human things and forces. In facing up to how we may ultimately be unable to “give voice” to these nonhuman agentic assemblages and activities of assemblage, we may encounter precisely the “outside” that vital materialism seeks to mark–not an outside that commands or is commanded by us, but which we encounter, respond to, and act with and sometimes against. Through attempting and pushing us to attempt with her this “impossible task,” Bennett thus calls us to see that vital materiality is a site of our contestation, imitation, and effort, but that it is not only this–it also resists our very attempts to understand it in these terms.Less
In this chapter, Jane Bennett questions whether discourses of nature or second nature are capable of pressing us to attend to the “force of things.” Bennett argues that a “politics of vital materialism”–which she both draws and ultimately distinguishes from 19th and 20th century vitalism–may better challenge the “destructive fantasies of mastery” of American consumption and production practices. It does so, on Bennett's account, because rather than attending to “biocultural assemblages” as products of human action and agency–as she sees “second nature” discourse as doing–a politics of vital materialism marks the presence and power of non-human things and forces. In facing up to how we may ultimately be unable to “give voice” to these nonhuman agentic assemblages and activities of assemblage, we may encounter precisely the “outside” that vital materialism seeks to mark–not an outside that commands or is commanded by us, but which we encounter, respond to, and act with and sometimes against. Through attempting and pushing us to attempt with her this “impossible task,” Bennett thus calls us to see that vital materiality is a site of our contestation, imitation, and effort, but that it is not only this–it also resists our very attempts to understand it in these terms.
Chris Pak
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781382844
- eISBN:
- 9781786945426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382844.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter brings to bear environmental philosopher Keekok Lee’s three fundamental environmental theses (the Asymmetry, Autonomy and No-Teleology Theses) to consider how science fiction constructs ...
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This chapter brings to bear environmental philosopher Keekok Lee’s three fundamental environmental theses (the Asymmetry, Autonomy and No-Teleology Theses) to consider how science fiction constructs human relationships to cosmological nature. It considers how pre-1950s science fiction engages with concepts now central to environmental philosophy before moving on to examine the sublime in proto-Gaian living world narratives. Underlying this discussion is the concept of nature’s otherness, a relationship between non-human nature and the human. It builds on the insight that the initial growth of ecologism in the 1880s involved two strands, a mechanistic view of nature based on energy economics and a monism that involved a vitalist view of nature as essentially irreducible to mechanistic conceptions. These concepts form the core of the readings to follow.Less
This chapter brings to bear environmental philosopher Keekok Lee’s three fundamental environmental theses (the Asymmetry, Autonomy and No-Teleology Theses) to consider how science fiction constructs human relationships to cosmological nature. It considers how pre-1950s science fiction engages with concepts now central to environmental philosophy before moving on to examine the sublime in proto-Gaian living world narratives. Underlying this discussion is the concept of nature’s otherness, a relationship between non-human nature and the human. It builds on the insight that the initial growth of ecologism in the 1880s involved two strands, a mechanistic view of nature based on energy economics and a monism that involved a vitalist view of nature as essentially irreducible to mechanistic conceptions. These concepts form the core of the readings to follow.
Rebekah Sheldon
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780816689873
- eISBN:
- 9781452955186
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816689873.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The fourth chapter asks why the figure of the child continues to circulate at all. What sentiments attaches to the child under conditions of neoliberalism and its regimes of flexible accumulation? ...
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The fourth chapter asks why the figure of the child continues to circulate at all. What sentiments attaches to the child under conditions of neoliberalism and its regimes of flexible accumulation? Once upon a time, perhaps, the figure of the child served as a link between the domestic interior and the national domestic, therefore centralizing sexuality and reproduction as the basis for economic vitality and designating the vigor of the household as the mechanism by which the nation rises and falls. By analyzing Margaret Atwood’s 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale next to her MaddAddam trilogy, this chapter explores how humanity’s age of “somatic capitalism” (neoliberalism + biopolitics of reproduction) requires the constrained vitality offered by reproduction and its issues.Less
The fourth chapter asks why the figure of the child continues to circulate at all. What sentiments attaches to the child under conditions of neoliberalism and its regimes of flexible accumulation? Once upon a time, perhaps, the figure of the child served as a link between the domestic interior and the national domestic, therefore centralizing sexuality and reproduction as the basis for economic vitality and designating the vigor of the household as the mechanism by which the nation rises and falls. By analyzing Margaret Atwood’s 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale next to her MaddAddam trilogy, this chapter explores how humanity’s age of “somatic capitalism” (neoliberalism + biopolitics of reproduction) requires the constrained vitality offered by reproduction and its issues.
