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Reading Mutant Narratives : The Bodily Experientiality of Contemporary Ecological Science Fiction

21 Feb 2020-
TL;DR: The work in this paper explores how narratives of environmental and personal transformation in contemporary ecological science fiction can develop more-than-human modes of embodied experience, and traces and describes experiential changes that take place while reading works of science fiction, and synthesizes these approaches into a method of close reading, performative enactivism, that helps to articulate bodily, environmental, and morethanhuman aspects of readerly engagement.
Abstract: Reading Mutant Narratives explores how narratives of environmental and personal transformation in contemporary ecological science fiction can develop more-thanhuman modes of embodied experience. More specifically, it attends to the conflicted yet potentially transformative experientiality of mutant narratives. Mutant narratives are viewed as uneasy hybrids of human-centered and posthumanist science fiction that contain potential for ecological understanding. Drawing on narrative studies and empirical reading studies, the dissertation begins from the premise that in suitable conditions, reading fiction may give rise to experiential change. The study traces and describes experiential changes that take place while reading works of science fiction. The bodily, subjective and historical conditions of reading are considered alongside the generic contexts and narrative features of the fictional works studied. As exemplary cases of mutant narratives, the study foregrounds the work of three American science fiction authors known for their critiques of anthropocentrism and for their articulations of more-than-human ecologies: Greg Bear, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Jeff VanderMeer. While much of contemporary fiction naturalizes embodied experience and hides their own narrative strategies, mutant narratives have the potential to defamiliarize readers’ notions of bodies and environments while also estranging their embodied experience of reading fiction. As a theoretical contribution to science fiction studies, the study considers such a readerly dynamic in terms of embodied estrangement. Building on theoretical and practical work done in both embodied cognitive and posthumanist approaches to literature, the study shows how engagements with fictional narratives can, for their part, shape readers’ habitual patterns of feeling and perception. These approaches are synthesized into a method of close reading, performative enactivism, that helps to articulate bodily, environmental, and more-thanhuman aspects of readerly engagement. Attending to such experiential aspects integrates ecological science fiction more deeply into the contemporary experiential situation of living with radical environmental transformation.
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Journal ArticleDOI
08 Sep 1978-Science

5,182 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose that the brain produces an internal representation of the world, and the activation of this internal representation is assumed to give rise to the experience of seeing, but it leaves unexplained how the existence of such a detailed internal representation might produce visual consciousness.
Abstract: Many current neurophysiological, psychophysical, and psychological approaches to vision rest on the idea that when we see, the brain produces an internal representation of the world. The activation of this internal representation is assumed to give rise to the experience of seeing. The problem with this kind of approach is that it leaves unexplained how the existence of such a detailed internal representation might produce visual consciousness. An alternative proposal is made here. We propose that seeing is a way of acting. It is a particular way of exploring the environment. Activity in internal representations does not generate the experience of seeing. The outside world serves as its own, external, representation. The experience of seeing occurs when the organism masters what we call the governing laws of sensorimotor contingency. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a natural and principled way of accounting for visual consciousness, and for the differences in the perceived quality of sensory experience in the different sensory modalities. Several lines of empirical evidence are brought forward in support of the theory, in particular: evidence from experiments in sensorimotor adaptation, visual \"filling in,\" visual stability despite eye movements, change blindness, sensory substitution, and color perception.

2,271 citations

01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, a what-if scenario on what could happen if we plan for the horse and who else that could benefit from that is presented, where the horse is the centre of the stable and the equestrian sport.
Abstract: Lunds Civila Ryttarforening, LCR, is one of Sweden’s largest equestrian clubs with its facilities located in between Norra Faladen to the north and LTH to the south. To the west of the horse facilities is “Smorlyckans Idrottsplats” with football pitches, tennis courts, a Jujutsu club and a Home Guard’s building. The club has approximately 500 weekly riders and offers a wide range of activities within the the riding school, as well as stalls for private horses. Discussions on whether the equestrian centre should be relocated or not have reached a standstill as it has been going on for about 50 years. I believe that if LCR is to stay on its current site it can not continue to be an island. Therefore this project is an investigation into how the centre could be developed meeting and integrating with its surroundings. As much as the horse is the centre of the stable and the equestrian sport it’s also the centre of this project. “When Species Meet” is a what-if scenario on what could happen if we plan for the horse and who else that could benefit from that. In addition to the architectural proposal, one major question with the project has been to develop my own method and investigate how it’s possible to keep a high rate of complexity when working with a project. This is something I have done by taking the position of the horse instead of the architect. This change of position has provided me with a possibility to see the site, with all its opportunities, from a perspective that I couldn’t have without the horse. Therefore, this project is also a try on how it could be possible to take on other projects by relocating my investigation to several other positions relevant for those projects. (Less)

1,140 citations

01 Jan 1992
TL;DR: The body politics of Julia Kristeva and the Body Politics of JuliaKristeva as discussed by the authors are discussed in detail in Section 5.1.1 and Section 6.2.1.
Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics

1,125 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In The Posthuman (2013), Rosi Braidotti offers a roadmap for navigating the global effects of this post-human predicament, one in which clear distinctions between the human and the non-human no longer hold, the nature-culture divide is destabilised, and man's privileged status is under attack as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: It can be said that we inhabit a post-human world—an existence characterised by smartphones and social media, genetically modified food and IVF babies, life-extending technologies and prosthetic enhancements. In The Posthuman (2013), Rosi Braidotti offers a roadmap for navigating the global effects of this post-human predicament—one in which clear distinctions between the human and the non-human no longer hold, the nature–culture divide is destabilised, and man’s privileged status is under attack. The situation we find ourselves in, Braidotti argues, is neither dystopian technological nightmare nor futuristic fantasy but one that requires complex and nuanced critical responses to issues of subjectivity, ethics and politics. In the four chapters comprising The Posthuman, Braidotti outlines her vision of the post-human future based on an affirmative politics, which ‘combines critique with creativity in the pursuit of alternative visions and projects’ (54). As a feminist antihumanist, Braidotti expresses little nostalgia for the concept of ‘Man’ and its associated individualism, Eurocentrism and anthropocentrism. Chapter 1 ‘Post-Humanism: Life Beyond the Self’ charts the Humanist/anti-humanist debates to draw attention to the crisis of the human and the opportunity it affords to imagine alternative subjectivities grounded in relationality and the interconnection between the self and others (49). Methodologically, Braidotti adopts a feminist politics of location in her critique of various Humanist traditions. There is a profound reflexivity to her writing as she guides the reader through the intellectual trajectory that has resulted in her nomadic, affirmative politics. It is a legacy that incorporates social movements of the 1960s/1970s, as well as the continental feminism of Irigaray and Kristeva. Spinoza and Deleuze and Guattari also feature as philosophical touchstones from which she advances her vision for the posthuman as a ‘relational subject constituted in and by multiplicity, that is to say a subject that works across differences and is also internally differentiated, but still grounded and accountable’ (49). By framing her argument within the narrative of her own intellectual story, the book conveys an immediacy and intimacy not often found in academic prose. Stylistically, it is as though we are inside her head—a post-human experience, indeed. Her writing is as expansive and impressive as you would expect—a swarm of ideas assuredly curated into a compelling argument for generating new forms of subjectivity and ethical relations to confront the challenges of a post-human existence. Consistent with existing feminist appraisals of the post-human (Halberstam and Livingston 1995; Hayles 1999; Toffoletti 2007), Braidotti acknowledges the complexity of the post-human predicament, seeking alternative frameworks to think about post-human subjectivity in non-dualistic ways. What Braidotti brings to these debates is an emphasis on materialism by way of Spinozist monism. In championing the relational, embodied and embedded qualities of post-human existence, Braidotti reprises the concept of zoe—a generative and vitalist force that allows for connections and affinities to be made across

866 citations

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a new materialist, feminist materialist and posthumanist approach to life is proposed, in the context of the humanities and the social sciences, perhaps especially within feminist theory.
Abstract: Recent stirrings wihin the humanities and the social sciences, perhaps especially within feminist theory, have engendered new materialist, feminist materialist and posthumanist approaches to life w ...

48 citations


"Reading Mutant Narratives : The Bod..." refers background in this paper

  • ...…posthumanism (see Wolfe 2010, Nayar 2014), cognitive literary studies (see Zunshine 2006, Cave 2016, Kukkonen 2019), Darwinist literary studies (see Carroll 2004, Boyd 2009), human animal studies (see Wolfe 2010), and feminist philosophy of science (see Haraway 1991, Åsberg et al. 2011)....

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  • ...Instead, it foregrounds the material elements that participate in the formation of bodies and identities, including biological, technological, economic, and ecological elements (see Barad 2003, Alaimo 2010, Bennett 2010, and Åsberg et al. 2011)....

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  • ...…theory helps us to delve deeper into topics relevant to both posthumanism and cognitive literary studies: bodily materiality, cultural construction of embodied experience, and the dynamics of subjective and collective change (see Åsberg et al. 2011, Braidotti 2013, 24–26, and Neimanis 2017, 10–12)....

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Book
16 Nov 1953

47 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper conducted a phenomenological study of readers' responses to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and identified six distinct types of commentary: metaphoric and quasi-metaphoric engagement with sensory imagery from the poem; progressive transformation of an emergent affective theme; and metaphoric blurring of boundaries between the reader's and narrator's perspectives.
Abstract: To articulate what constitutes expressive reading, we conducted a phenomenological study of readers’ responses to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. After reading the poem twice during 1 week, each of 40 readers chose five passages that they found striking or evocative and then commented on each one. Numerically aided phenomenological methods [(Kuiken, D., & Miall, D. S. (2001). Numerically aided phenomenology: Procedures for investigating categories of experience. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 2(1). Retrieved from http:// www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/976] were used to (a) compare these commentaries, identifying and paraphrasing recurrent meaning expressions (called constituents); (b) create matrices reflective of the profiles of constituents found in each commentary; (c) create clusters of commentaries according to the similarities in their profiles of constituents; and (d) examine each cluster to ascertain their distinctive attributes. Among the six distinct types of commentary identified, one in particular involved (a) metaphoric and quasi-metaphoric engagement with sensory imagery from the poem; (b) progressive transformation of an emergent affective theme; and (c) metaphoric blurring of boundaries between the reader’s and narrator’s perspectives. This mode of reading, which we call expressive enactment, contrasted with five other types of response: ironic allegoresis, aesthetic feeling, autobiographical assimilation, autobiographical diversion, and nonengagement.

46 citations


"Reading Mutant Narratives : The Bod..." refers background or methods in this paper

  • ...Cognitive reading studies suggest that reading fiction can help to effect changes in self-perception (Kuiken et al. 2004, Sikora et al. 2011), personality traits (Djikic et al. 2009), environmental perception (Kuzmičová 2016), and behavior (Kaufman and Libby 2012)....

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  • ...In this chapter, I introduce studies that identify specific reading styles, such as “expressive enactment” (Sikora et al. 2011), and suggest that the insights in these styles can contribute to developing new modes of close reading....

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  • ...Analyzing these responses, the authors identified several styles of reading, including a style of reading they call “expressive enactment” (Sikora et al. 2011, 263)....

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  • ...In an empirical phenomenological study on reader-response conducted by Don Kuiken, David S. Miall and Shelley Sikora (Kuiken et al. 2004, Sikora et al. 2011), the participants read a long poem....

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  • ...The authors point out that expressive enactment differs from other modes of reader response in that it combines personal reflection with engagement with the formal features of the text (Sikora et al. 2011, 267)....

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Book
26 Jun 2015
TL;DR: In this paper, the social nature of literary narrative understanding is discussed, focusing on two alternative organizations of human experience: Narrative and Enaction in Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Allegory in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.
Abstract: Introduction: Why We Have Stories Part 1 1. Perceptual Causality and Narrative Causality 2. Narrativity and Enaction: The Social Nature of Literary Narrative Understanding 3. Narrative and Metaphor: On Two Alternative Organizations of Human Experience Part 2 4. Narrativity and Enaction in Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 5 . Narrative and Allegory in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go 6. Narrative and Metaphor in the Tales of Henry James Afterword

46 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
25 May 2016-Leonardo
TL;DR: Pastoureau as discussed by the authors defined the color that embellishes painting, manuscript illumination, sculpture, textiles, costume and heraldic emblems as a social phenomenon and claimed that it is the society that makes color, that gives it its definitions and meaning, that constructs its codes and values.
Abstract: technical handbooks (Feller, Mayer, Clarke) and dictionaries of symbols (Chevalier, Gheerbrant, Cooper) to theoretical and scientific treatises (Cennini, Alberti, de Piles, Chevreul, Rood, Itten), Pastoureau’s investigation defines the color that embellishes painting, manuscript illumination, sculpture, textiles, costume and heraldic emblems as a social phenomenon. “It is the society that ‘makes’ color,” he claims, “that gives it its definitions and meaning, that constructs its codes and values.” A French professor of Medieval History and Western Symbolism at the Sorbonne’s École pratique des hautes etudes, Pastoureau has published extensively on the cultural significance of color, medieval symbolism and heraldry, with books that include such exquisite titles as L’arbre: histoire naturelle et symbolique de l’arbre, du bois et du fruit au moyen age and The Bear: History of a Fallen King. Closely attuned to etymology, the author cites connotations that derive from terms such as glaukos and chloros, coined in Homer; viridis, in use among the Romans; and silva and silvaticus from the medieval oral tradition and the heraldic sinople. He considers mineralogy, trade networks, dyes and artificial pigments as well as industrial practices involving regulatory guilds, sumptuary laws, medicinal plants and herbicides. He regards green, chemically unstable and subject to fading over time, as an ambivalent color, suggestive of life, growth, nature and hope as well as sickness, demonism and putrefaction. Variously informed by biblical symbolism, liturgical exigency, Arabic medicine, the Protestant Reformation, iconoclasm, courtly romance and Renaissance speculation, empirical studies in the aftermath of the Scientific Revolution and Newton’s experiments in light refraction led to more systematic color theorizations informed by analytic psychology, physiology, physics and later b o o k s

45 citations


"Reading Mutant Narratives : The Bod..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Noë, Alva....

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  • ...This work has been carried on by cognitive scientists and philosophers such as Daniel Hutto, Michelle Maiese, Giovanna Colombetti, and Alva Noë....

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  • ...O’Regan, J. Kevin and Noë, Alva....

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  • ...Rather, I am guided into adopting a certain style of embodied experience, through which the empathetic, socially attuned reading feels natural (see Warhol 2003, Braidotti 2013, Noë 2015)....

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  • ...66 In Alva Noë’s (2015, 5–6, 11–18) terms, daily encounters with physical environments do not only provide human cognizers with affordances for action but also organize them in structured activities....

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