Life After Literature : Perspectives on Biopoetics in Literature and Theory

This book offers innovative investigations of the concept of life in art and in theory. It features essays that explore biopoetics and look at how insights from the natural sciences shape research within the humanities. Since literature, works of art, and other cultural products decisively shape our ideas of what it means to be human, the contributors to this volume examine the question of what literature, literary and cultural criticism, and philosophy contribute to the distinctions (or non-distinctions) between human, animal, and vegetal existence. Coverage combines different methodological aspects and addresses a wide field of comparative literary studies. The essays consider the question of language (as a distinctive feature of human existence) in a number of different contexts, which range from Aristotle’s works, through several historical layers of the philosophical discourse on the origins of speech, to modern anthropology, and 20th century continental philosophy. In addition, the volume includes concrete case studies to the current post-humanism debate and provides literary, art historian, and philosophical perspectives on animal studies.The historical multiplicity of the various cultural representations of biological existence (be that human, animal, vegetal, or mixed) might serve as a productive foundation for discussing the nature and forms of literature’s critical contributions to our understanding of these fundamental categories. This volume opens up this subject to students and scholars of literature, art, philosophy, ethics, and cultural studies, and to anyone with a theoretical interest in the questions of life. \ Front Matter ....Pages i-ix Introduction (Zoltán Kulcsár-Szabó, Tamás Lénárt, Attila Simon, Roland Végső)....Pages 1-13 Front Matter ....Pages 15-15 Bio-poetics and the Dynamic Multiplicity of Bios: How Literature Challenges the Politics, Economics and Sciences of Life (Vittoria Borsò)....Pages 17-32 Institution and Life as an Institution: Uterus: Mother’s Body, Father’s Right (Life and Norm) (Petar Bojanić)....Pages 33-38 Towards a Poetics of Worldlessness: Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Human Action (Roland Végső)....Pages 39-51 Front Matter ....Pages 53-53 Man and Other Political Animals in Aristotle (Attila Simon)....Pages 55-65 Is There an Essential Convergence Between Signification and Animals? On the Truth and Lying of Animal Names in a Nietzschean Sense (Hajnalka Halász)....Pages 67-78 Noble Promises: Performativity and Physiology in Nietzsche (Csongor Lőrincz)....Pages 79-107 Austin’s Animals (Zoltán Kulcsár-Szabó)....Pages 109-116 Self-interpreting Language Animal: Charles Taylor’s Anthropology (Csaba Olay)....Pages 117-135 Front Matter ....Pages 137-137 The Theriomorphic Face (Georg Witte)....Pages 139-162 ‘Step by Step into Ever Greater Decadence’: Discourses of Life and Metamorphic Anthropology (Márió Z. Nemes)....Pages 163-177 Bio-Aesthetics: The Production of Life in Contemporary Art (Jessica Ullrich)....Pages 179-199 Front Matter ....Pages 201-201 Io’s Writing: Human and Animal in the Prison-House of Fiction (Ábel Tamás)....Pages 203-213 ‘Lizard on a Sunlit Stone’: Lőrinc Szabó and the Biopoetical Beginnings of Modern Poetry (Ernő Kulcsár Szabó)....Pages 215-228 Of Mice and Men: Dissolution and Reconstruction of ‘Nature’s Larger Scheme’: Burns, Mészöly, Kertész (Tamás Lénárt)....Pages 229-239 Towards a Literary Entomology: Arthropods and Humans in William H. Gass (Gábor Tamás Molnár)....Pages 241-259 Biophilology and the Metabolism of Literature (Susanne Strätling)....Pages 261-278 Back Matter ....Pages 279-284 This book offers innovative investigations of the concept of life in art and in theory. It features essays that explore biopoetics and look at how insights from the natural sciences shape research within the humanities. Since literature, works of art, and other cultural products decisively shape our ideas of what it means to be human, the contributors to this volume examine the question of what literature, literary and cultural criticism, and philosophy contribute to the distinctions (or non-distinctions) between human, animal, and vegetal existence. Coverage combines different methodological aspects and addresses a wide field of comparative literary studies. The essays consider the question of language (as a distinctive feature of human existence) in a number of different contexts, which range from Aristotle{u2019}s works, through several historical layers of the philosophical discourse on the origins of speech, to modern anthropology, and 20th century continental philosophy. In addition, the volume includes concrete case studies to the current post-humanism debate and provides literary, art historian, and philosophical perspectives on animal studies. The historical multiplicity of the various cultural representations of biological existence (be that human, animal, vegetal, or mixed) might serve as a productive foundation for discussing the nature and forms of literature{u2019}s critical contributions to our understanding of these fundamental categories. This volume opens up this subject to students and scholars of literature, art, philosophy, ethics, and cultural studies, and to anyone with a theoretical interest in the questions of life