
Modernist Parasites
Bioethics, Dependency, and Literature, Post-1900
Sebastian Williams(Author)
Lexington Books (Publisher)
Published on 22. August 2023
Book
Hardback
208 pages
978-1-6669-2129-8 (ISBN)
Description
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.
Reviews / Votes
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. -- Rachel Murray, University of Bristol Modernist Parasites: Bioethics, Dependency, and Literature is a welcome contribution to the current critical conversation on modernism and the posthuman. The analysis moves deftly between national, historical and socio-economic contexts. From the unimaginable squalor of everyday life on the Western Front, through the choked landscapes of the American dust bowl, to the contradictions of twentieth-century metropolitan culture, parasitism defines modernist biopolitics.The study amasses a wealth of textual evidence and theoretical argument, drawing from the American and the European traditions (Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, John Steinbeck, Erskine Caldwell, Franz Kafka, Clarice Lispector, Mina Loy, Nella Larsen and George Orwell) to show that the parasite inhabits the century's most vivid expressions of the marginalised and the abject. -- Ruben Borg, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
2 b/w illustrations;
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
496 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-6669-2129-8 (9781666921298)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
08/2023
1st Edition
Lexington Books
€90.99
Available for download

E-Book
08/2023
1st Edition
Lexington Books
€90.99
Available for download
Person
Sebastian Williams is assistant professor of English at Davis & Elkins College.
Content
Table of Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Introduction
Chapter 1: Contagion, Pests, and Parasites in Trench Poetry
Chapter 2: "The Million Enemies of the Earth": Parasitism and Poverty in Great Depression Literature
Chapter 3: "Monstrous Vermin": Becoming the Modernist Parasite
Chapter 4: "Parasitism & Prostitution-Or Negation": The Parasite in Modernist Feminism
Chapter 5: The Tramp: Social Parasitism, Vagrancy, and Health
Epilogue
Bibliography
About the Author
Dedication
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Introduction
Chapter 1: Contagion, Pests, and Parasites in Trench Poetry
Chapter 2: "The Million Enemies of the Earth": Parasitism and Poverty in Great Depression Literature
Chapter 3: "Monstrous Vermin": Becoming the Modernist Parasite
Chapter 4: "Parasitism & Prostitution-Or Negation": The Parasite in Modernist Feminism
Chapter 5: The Tramp: Social Parasitism, Vagrancy, and Health
Epilogue
Bibliography
About the Author