Systems of Life: Biopolitics, Economics, and Literature on the Cusp of Modernity (Forms of Living)

__Systems of Life__ offers a wide-ranging revaluation of the emergence of biopolitics in Europe from the mid– eighteenth to the mid–nineteenth century. In staging an encounter among literature, political economy, and the still emergent sciences of life in that historical moment, the essays collected here reopen the question of how concepts of animal, vegetable, and human life, among other biological registers, had an impact on the Enlightenment project of thinking politics and economics as a joint enterprise. The volume’s contributors consider politics, economics, and the biological as distinct, semi-autonomous spheres whose various combinations required inventive, sometimes incomplete, acts of conceptual mediation, philosophical negotiation, disciplinary intervention, or aesthetic representation. Contents......Page 8 Introduction: Systems of Life, or Bioeconomic Politics......Page 12 1. Looking for (Economic) Growth in the Eighteenth Century......Page 46 2. An African Diasporic Critique of Violence......Page 67 3. Rousseau: Vital Instinct and Pity......Page 93 4. System and Subject in Adam Smith’s Political Economy: Nature, Vitalism, and Bioeconomic Life......Page 104 5. Vitalism’s Revolution: John Thelwall, Life, and the Economy of Radical Politics......Page 125 6. Writing Generation: Revolutionary Bodies and the Poetics of Political Economy......Page 146 7. William Blake and the Time of Ontogeny......Page 173 8. Concerning Hunger: Empire Aesthetics in the Present Moment......Page 212 9. The Hero Takes a Fall: Gravity, Comedy, and Darwin’s Entangled Bank......Page 247 Acknowledgments......Page 266 List of Contributors......Page 268 Index......Page 272 Introduction : systems of life, or bioeconomic politics / Richard A. Barney and Warren Montag -- Looking for (economic) growth in the eighteenth century / Christian Marouby -- An African diasporic critique of violence / James Edward Ford III -- Rousseau : vital instinct and pity / Pierre Macherey -- System and subject in Adam Smith's political economy : nature, vitalism, and bioeconomic life / Catherine Packham -- Vitalism's revolution : John Thelwall, life, and the economy of radical politics / Richard A. Barney -- Writing generation : revolutionary bodies and the poetics of political economy / Annika Mann -- William Blake and the time of ontogeny / Amanda Jo Goldstein -- Concerning hunger : empire aesthetics in the present moment / Mrinalini Chakravorty -- The hero takes a fall : gravity, comedy, and Darwin's entangled bank / Timothy C. Campbell 'Systems of Life' offers a wide-ranging revaluation of the emergence of biopolitics in Europe from the mid-18th to the mid-19th century. In staging an encounter among literature, political economy, and the still emergent sciences of life in that historical moment, the essays collected here reopen the question of how concepts of animal, vegetable, and human life, among other biological registers, had an impact on the Enlightenment project of thinking politics and economics as a joint enterprise. The volume's contributors consider politics, economics, and the biological as distinct, semi-autonomous spheres whose various combinations required inventive, sometimes incomplete, acts of conceptual mediation, philosophical negotiation, disciplinary intervention, or aesthetic representation