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stacked top down, turns out to be an altogether more lateral beast. When traditional distinctions of up and down, inside and out are blurred, it is not always possible to distinguish self from monstrous Other. The identification between Victor Frankenstein and his monstrous creation is an obvious example. Dangerous bodies come in many packages, from repressive corporate bodies, to the abject, sacrificial
However, a reading that considers the mother-figure and the related emotional complex of female desire and creativity will show the excess of the romance in gothic texture. The recognition of gothic mothers started with Moers’s well-known reading of Frankenstein as a birth myth ( 1978 , 93); Fleenor reads the ‘quest-for-mother motif’ as structuring
originality was to be found within the Gothic, with Drake in ‘On Gothic Superstition’ (1798) going so far as to locate the inspirational presence of spectres within the natural world (spectres dismissed by Young as the product of a debased imagination in Night Thoughts ). Death and the creative imagination were given a new affiliation in Frankenstein (1818, revised 1831), where Frankenstein can be
’), and Mary Shelley ( Frankenstein ), all of which are cited in more or less explicit terms in Duncker’s text, with a particular emphasis on Shelley’s novel. However, the novel is not a pure exercise in intertextual virtuosity; instead, it reads as a dizzying and dangerous experiment that, through the citing and reinterpretation of Oedipal scripts, participates in a poiesis of kinship that erodes binary
-based environment are inappropriate to urban capitalism. The inadequacy of the workers to their new situation is rendered in all the social writings of the period in terms of inarticulacy and unsteadiness – characteristics of children (infant = unable to speak; cf Beer, G, in Barker, 1978). But Gaskell also sees that the manufacturers have in a sense created this class of people, and have therefore a functional responsibility towards them. In Chapter 15, explaining the growth of class-antagonism, Elizabeth Gaskell uses the image of Frankenstein and his monster (making the common
. The daughter of Godwin and Wollstonecraft read Goethe’s novel in 1815, and her own writings further explore estrangement from the story of Werther as a source of horror. A number of critics have explored Frankenstein ’s connections with The Sorrows of Werther – Werther is one of the books that the Creature employs to make sense of his life. While the mention of Werther is brief and restricted to a single passage, its influence is more pervasive with respect to Frankenstein ’s epistolary form, love triangles, allusion to other literary works within its
ties. As early as 1818, the biological basis of kinship ties were radically challenged by Mary Shelley in the form of Victor Frankenstein’s relationship with his monster, who exclaims that they are ‘bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us’. 6 Starting from the assumption that Gothic fiction is a key site where sociocultural figurations of the family are negotiated, this
This book is about science in theatre and performance. It explores how theatre and performance engage with emerging scientific themes from artificial intelligence to genetics and climate change. The book covers a wide range of performance forms from the spectacle of the Paralympics Opening Ceremony to Broadway musicals, from experimental contemporary performance and opera to educational theatre, Somali poetic drama and grime videos. It features work by pioneering companies including Gob Squad, Headlong Theatre and Theatre of Debate as well as offering fresh analysis of global blockbusters such as Wicked and Urinetown. The book offers detailed description and analysis of theatre and performance practices as well as broader commentary on the politics of theatre as public engagement with science. It documents important examples of collaborative practice with extended discussion of the Theatre of Debate process developed by Y Touring theatre company, exploration of bilingual theatre-making in East London and an account of how grime MCs and dermatologists ended up making a film together in Birmingham. The interdisciplinary approach draws on contemporary research in theatre and performance studies in combination with key ideas from science studies. It shows how theatre can offer important perspectives on what the philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers has called ‘cosmopolitics’. The book argues that theatre can flatten knowledge hierarchies and hold together different ways of knowing.
This book is about people willing to do the sorts of things that most others couldn't, shouldn't or wouldn't. While there are all sorts of reasons why people consume substances, the author notes that there are those who treat drug-taking like an Olympic sport, exploring their capacity to really push their bodies, and frankly, wanting to be the best at it. Extreme athletes, death-defiers and those who perform incredible stunts of endurance have been celebrated throughout history. The most successful athletes can compartmentalise, storing away worry and pain in a part of their brain so it does not interfere with their performance. The brain releases testosterone, for a boost of strength and confidence. In bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism (BDSM) play, the endogenous opioid system responds to the pain, releasing opioid peptides. It seems some of us are more wired than others to activate those ancient biological systems, be it through being caned in a dungeon during a lunchbreak or climbing a sheer rock wall at the weekend. Back in 1990, sociologist Stephen Lyng coined the term 'edgework', now frequently used in BDSM circles, as 'voluntary pursuit of activities that involve a high potential for death, physical injury, or spiritual harm'.
Manchester: Something rich and strange challenges us to see the quintessential post-industrial city in new ways. Bringing together twenty-three diverse writers and a wide range of photographs of Greater Manchester, it argues that how we see the city can have a powerful effect on its future – an urgent question given how quickly the urban core is being transformed. The book uses sixty different words to speak about the diversity of what we think of as Manchester – whether the chimneys of its old mills, the cobbles mostly hidden under the tarmac, the passages between terraces, or the everyday act of washing clothes in a laundrette. Unashamedly down to earth in its focus, this book makes the case for a renewed imaginative relationship that recognises and champions the fact that we’re all active in the making and unmaking of urban spaces.