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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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.
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TL;DR: In this article, a book containing multitudes revisiting the infection metaphor in science fiction is recommended for new readers to read, which is not kind of difficult book to read and can be read and understand by the new readers.
Abstract: Preparing the books to read every day is enjoyable for many people. However, there are still many people who also don't like reading. This is a problem. But, when you can support others to start reading, it will be better. One of the books that can be recommended for new readers is containing multitudes revisiting the infection metaphor in science fiction. This book is not kind of difficult book to read. It can be read and understand by the new readers.
11 citations
"Reading Mutant Narratives : The Bod..." refers methods in this paper
...Bollinger, Laurel....
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...Longer analyses of Bear’s work are provided by Roger Luckhurst (2007) and Laurel Bollinger (2009, 2010), while Heather Schell (2002) and Tom Idema (2019) focus specifically on the Darwin novels....
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TL;DR: I n her address to the International Society for ECT and Neurostimulation last Spring, Julie Hersh, grateful recipient of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and author of Struck by Living, shared a metaphor she uses to educate others considering the treatment.
Abstract: I n her address to the International Society for ECT and Neurostimulation last Spring, Julie Hersh, grateful recipient of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and author of Struck by Living, shared a metaphor she uses to educate others considering the treatment. ‘‘It’s like a triple bypass operation for depression.’’ I had not heard that particular expression before, but I appreciate how these words convey the notion that both treatments require anesthesia, have attendant risks, but are nevertheless necessary, life-saving, and part of mainstream practice. Likening depression to coronary artery disease emphasizes that both are severe illnesses for which there are a range of effective treatments. However, my recollection of the open heart surgery I underwent in 2001 is that it is a considerably bigger deal than ECT. One of the primary aims of the informed consent discussion is to help patients achieve an adequate understanding of the nature of the treatment. Absent a true pathophysiologic explanation for ECT’s mechanism of action, I am surely not alone among practitioners in my penchant for collecting approximate comparisons. The heart is like a pump. The cardiothoracic surgeon who repaired my leaky mitral valve certainly leaned on this metaphor in our discussions, but not the cardiologist who alternately ablated and cardioverted the atrial flutter that arose after the surgery. He did not really have an analogy, and I understood about half of what he told me. If the heart is like a pump, then the brain is like . . . what? A neurotransmitter pump? ‘‘ECT causes the release of virtually all the chemical messengers in the brain.’’ A computer? ‘‘ECT is like pushing the restart button on your PC when it’s become dysfunctional.’’ Temple Grandin likens the brain to an office building with a multitude of departments and an autistic brain with its relative overabundance of gray over white matter to an office building limited to communication by slow fax machines. If you like that one, then ECT is like an announcement over the public address system saying ‘‘Break time is overVeveryone get back to work!’’ A particular analogy may prove more apt for a given patient, but all analogies degenerate when viewed from the angle where differences exceed similarities and where there are idiosyncratic associations (Apple computer owners swear to me they have never been forced to reboot their machines). I am not among those who would propose a different name for ECT, as it seems perfectly descriptive of the procedure. Electroconvulsive therapy is . . . an electrical stimulus, followed by a convulsive response, which is known to be therapeutic. The inaccurate understanding and consequent public relations problem arises when negative associations to ‘‘electric’’ and ‘‘convulsive’’ are left unqualified. I tell patients and their families that all brain cells respond to an electric stimulus and that the movements and other physiologic responses we see are reflective of the integrity of the nervous system. The electrical stimulus is controlled, localized, and tuned (and for some of us, routinely titrated) to just the right physiologic intensity to produce a synchronous and rhythmic oscillation of populations of neurons. Electroconvulsive therapy is like a Jazzercise workout for out-of-shape brain cells? I invite the readership to experiment and share preferred similes and their experiences with how these have hit or missed with patients. After all, we deal with a very complex organ. It is not so easy to ‘‘keep it simple.’’ Particularly challenging is how we will convey (and understand for ourselves) the burgeoning neuroscience literature as it relates to our craft. I remain hopeful that like Kekulé’s snake biting its tail in the shape of a benzene molecule, the perfect analogy may yet reveal itself. Meanwhile, our comprehension will be approximate and our ability to communicate truthfully and persuasively the difference between rejection and acceptance of a truly remarkable therapeutic tool.
10 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore how issues of "not quite humanness" expose the conditions of possibility of being considered human; of human ontology and refer to these dynamics for identifying sameness and...
Abstract: This article explores how issues of ‘not quite human-ness’ expose the conditions of possibility of being considered human; of human ontology. I refer to these dynamics for identifying sameness and ...
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze how gender and humanity are negotiated in relation to the figure of the cyborg woman in the television series The Bionic Woman and its remake, or re-imagination, Bionic Women.
Abstract: This article analyses how gender and humanity are negotiated in relation to the figure of the cyborg woman in the television series The Bionic Woman and its remake, or re-imagination, Bionic Woman . It examines these cyborg women within a post-humanist framework, inspired by Donna Haraway’s cyborg. It claims that both Bionic Woman series highlight the often-contradictory norms concerning gender and humanity and raise questions of control in human–non-human relations. The two series are also examined in the context of certain Western Euro-American understandings of humanity.
9 citations
Book•
16 Dec 2016
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"Reading Mutant Narratives : The Bod..." refers background in this paper
...…insists, experience as experienced in the moment, or pristine experience, is not the same as verbalized experience or experience when reflected upon after the fact, which both fall under the umbrella of broad experience (Caracciolo and Hurlburt 2016, 58–59, 77–78, see also Hurlburt 2011)....
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...As Caracciolo and Hurlburt (2016) point out, empirical studies of experience surprisingly rarely inform either psychological theory or narrative theory....
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...In a stratified and 22 For further problematization of embodied experience, see Caracciolo and Hurlburt (2016), a work that is also a remarkable exception to Caracciolo’s normally detached style....
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