The Modernist Corpse [electronic resource] : Posthumanism and the Posthumous / Erin E. Edwards.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Edwards, Erin E., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--20th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

Dead in literature.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (228 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

Summary:

An unconventional take on the corpse challenges traditional conceptions of who-and what-counts as human, while offering bold insights into the modernist projectToo often regarded as the macabre endpoint of life, the corpse is rarely discussed and largely kept out of the public eye. InThe Modernist Corpse, Erin E. Edwards unearths the critically important but previously buried life of the corpse, which occupies a unique place between biology and technology, the living and the dead. Exploring the posthumous as the posthuman, Edwards argues that the corpse is central to understanding relations between the human and its "others," including the animal, the machine, and the thing.From photographs of lynchings to documentation of World War I casualties, the corpse is also central to the modernist project. Edwards turns critical attention to the corpse through innovative, posthumanist readings of canonical thinkers such as William Faulkner, Jean Toomer, W. E. B. Du Bois, Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes, and Gertrude Stein, offering new insights into the intersections among race, gender, technical media, and matter presumed to be dead. Edwards's expansive approach to modernism includes diverse materials such as Hollywood film, experimental photography, autopsy discourses, and the comic stripKrazy Kat, producing a provocatively broad understanding of the modernist corpse and its various "lives."The Modernist Corpseboth establishes important new directions for modernist inquiry and overturns common thought about the relationship between living and dead matter.

Contents:

Introduction: a modernist body count

Inhuman remains: the production and decomposition of the human in William Faulkner's south

Autopsy-optics: Jean Toomer's Cane through the photographic lens

Sutures and grooves: Mina Loy, Baroness Elsa, and the corpus of early-twentieth-century media

Love and corpses: Djuna Barnes's queer posthumanism

Coda. in kind cuts: Gertrude Stein's tender buttons and the nonhuman corpse.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-4529-5728-2

OCLC:

1019666770