Modernist Parasites

Bioethics, Dependency, and Literature, Post-1900

Inbunden, Engelska, 2023

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Modernist Parasites: Bioethics, Dependency, and Literature, Post-1900 analyzes biological and social parasites in the political, scientific, and literary imagination. With the rise of Darwinism, eugenics, and parasitology in the late nineteenth century, Sebastian Williams posits that the “parasite” came to be humanity’s ultimate other—a dangerous antagonist. But many authors such as Isaac Rosenberg, John Steinbeck, Franz Kafka, Clarice Lispector, Nella Larsen, and George Orwell reconsider parasitism. Ultimately, parasites inherently depend on others for their survival, illustrating the limits of ethical models that privilege the discrete individual above interdependent communities.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2023-08-22
Mått157 x 237 x 22 mm
Vikt490 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SeriePosthumanities and Citizenship Futures
Antal sidor208
FörlagBloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN9781666921298

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Litteraturvetenskap inom Skonlitteratur
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Table of ContentsDedicationAcknowledgmentsList of FiguresIntroductionChapter 1: Contagion, Pests, and Parasites in Trench PoetryChapter 2: “The Million Enemies of the Earth”: Parasitism and Poverty in Great Depression Literature Chapter 3: “Monstrous Vermin”: Becoming the Modernist ParasiteChapter 4: “Parasitism & Prostitution—Or Negation”: The Parasite in Modernist FeminismChapter 5: The Tramp: Social Parasitism, Vagrancy, and HealthEpilogueBibliographyAbout the Author

We tend to think of parasites as greedy, self-serving figures. Yet Modernist Parasites explores what these figures have given to, rather than taken from, literary writers. From the First World War poetry of Isaac Rosenberg to the experimental writing of Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector, Williams argues that the figure of the parasite is central to modernist writers’ imagining of a relational, interdependent model of selfhood – one that productively troubles the liberal humanist conception of the self as bounded, singular, and autonomous. Readers of modernism, animal studies, and posthumanism will find much to draw on this generous and generative study of literary parasitism.