Words as Witness: Remembering the Present in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Journal
SPELL Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2018
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Tudeau-Clayton, Margaret
Hilpert, Martin
Abstract (De)
In times of radical change, a double bind underwriting modes of knowing increases as habits in perception are destabilized. The agency of cognition is greatly dependent on techniques of recognition, while the ability to rethink or recognize is bound up in and facilitated through processes of aesthetic organization, with representation important amongst them. In a context of radical change, what challenges might language and literature face as possible modes of cognition and representation? Originally published in 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus emerges from an era defined by radical change. I want to reconsider its capacity for addressing change by reading it as a technography – writing that is both about technology while also functioning in the capacity of technology – with regard to its techniques of usage, how language as a theme in the novel has been and might be interpreted, and how these together relate to the novel’s historically situated reflections on techno-social transition.
Language
English
Keywords
Frankenstein
dual revolution
language as technology
modernity
technography
techno-social transition
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
HSG Profile Area
SHSS - Kulturen, Institutionen, Maerkte (KIM)
Refereed
Yes
Publisher
Narr Franke Attempo Verlag
Publisher place
Tübingen
Volume
SPELL Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature
Number
36
Start page
67
End page
100
Division(s)
Contact Email Address
scott.loren@unisg.ch
Eprints ID
256708