New Human in Literature

Posthuman Visions of Changes in Body, Mind and Society after 1900

AvMads Rosendahl Thomsen

Inbunden, Engelska, 2013

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Beskrivning

Twentieth-century literature changed understandings of what it meant to be human. Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, in this historical overview, presents a record of literature's changing ideas of mankind, questioning the degree to which literature records and creates visions of the new human. Grounded in the theory of Niklas Luhmann and drawing on canonical works, Thomsen uses literary changes in the mind, body and society to define the new human. He begins with the modernist minds of Virginia Woolf, Williams Carlos Williams and Louis-Ferdinand Celine's, discusses the society-changing concepts envisioned by Chinua Achebe, Mo Yan and Orhan Pamuk. He concludes with science fiction, discussing Don DeLillo and Michel Houellebecq's ideas of revolutionizing man through biotechnology. This is a study about imagination, aesthetics and ethics that demonstrates literature's capacity to not only imagine the future but portray the conflicting desires between individual and various collectives better than any other media. A study that heightens reflections on human evolution and posthumanism.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2013-09-26
Mått:156 x 234 x 19 mm
Vikt:542 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:256
Förlag:Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN:9781441183194

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Mer om författaren

Mads Rosendahl Thomsen is Professor with Special Responsibilities in Comparative Literature at Aarhus University, Denmark. He is the author of Mapping World Literature: International Canonization and Transnational Literature (2008), The New Human in Literature: Posthuman Visions of Changes in Body, Mind and Society (2013), and the editor of several volumes, including World Literature: A Reader (2012) and The Posthuman Condition: Ethics, Aesthetics and Politics of Biotechnological Challenges (2012). He is a member of the Academia Europaea and an advisory board member of the Institute for World Literature.

Recensioner i media

Both a meditation on the status of literature and on that of the human, this book has the tact to treat these two concerns as parallel, but related - not identical. The result is a salutary reminder of the fragility of all "autopoiesis." The New Human in Literature shows how indispensable to ideas of species identity and culture the technological imagination has always been.

Innehållsförteckning

Acknowledgements Introduction Part 1 The Triune Human1 A Systemic View of the Human 2 An Emerging Cultural History of the Twentieth Century3 History, Technique, Imagination4 The New Human and the Medium of LiteraturePart 2 Self-modernization5 Virginia Woolf 6 William Carlos Williams 7 Louis-Ferdinand Céline Part 3 The Grand Projects 8 Chinua Achebe 9 Mo Yan 10 Orhan Pamuk Part 4 The Final Frontier 11 Literature as Lab 12 Don DeLillo 13 Michel Houellebecq Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index