Subjects of Substance: Recent American Literature and the Materiality of Mind

Julian Henneberg

Published by transcript Verlag 2020

Subjects of Substance

Recent American Literature and the Materiality of Mind

Julian Henneberg

Volume 28 in the series American Culture Studies

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839449295

Overview
Contents

About this book

Recent U.S. literature has both been informed by, and critically engaged with, materialist conceptions of selfhood. Over the past decades, disciplines like neuroscience and evolutionary biology have increasingly recast the human self as a malleable construct produced by physiological processes. In a parallel development, literary authors have created their own conceptions of somatic subjectivity in conjunction or contrast with scientific and medical discourses. Subjects of Substance examines the forms, functions, and effects of materialist models of mind in selected memoirs and novels. Authors discussed include Michael W. Clune, Don DeLillo, Kay Redfield Jamison, Siri Hustvedt, Richard Powers, Elyn R. Saks, and David Foster Wallace.

Author / Editor information

Julian Henneberg, born in 1981, earned his doctorate from the Graduate School of North American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. He lives and works in Berlin.

Supplementary Materials

Leseprobe

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	1
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	5
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	7
1. Introduction: Materialist Minds Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	9
2. Key Terms and Concepts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
3. “My wayward brain”: Cerebral Subjectivity and Narrative Identity in the Neuro-Memoir Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
4. “Just some kind of nerve impulse in the brain”: Substances and Subjects in the Novels of Don DeLillo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
5. Between Agency and Automatism: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
6. Neural Narrative: Richard Powers’s Galatea 2.2 and The Echo Maker Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 330
Keywords: Neuroscience; Self; Brain; Materialism; Literature; America; Human; American Studies; General Literature Studies; Body; Philosophical Anthropology; Literary Studies

eBook

Published: July 27, 2020
ISBN: 9783839449295