As lively mock’d as ever: Plasticity and the aesthetic image of life

Carr, Brandon

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Description

Title

As lively mock’d as ever: Plasticity and the aesthetic image of life

Author(s)

Carr, Brandon

Issue Date

2018-04-03

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

• Blake, Nancy
• Michelson, Bruce

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Blake, Nancy

Committee Member(s)

• Courtemanche, Eleanor
• Proulx, François

Department of Study

Comparative & World Literature

Discipline

Comparative Literature

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Aesthetics
• Biology
• Hegel
• Malabou
• Plasticity
• Literature
• Structuralism

Abstract

This dissertation contends with the treatment of the biological in literary representation, arguing that the biological lacunae particularly visible in critical practice are best redressed by a formal exploration of aesthetic images of life. Biology, as I will show, admits of contingency, spontaneity, and novelty at the level of its aesthetic representation in a manner entirely distinct from what might be gleaned from a critical practice focused exclusively on the annals of discursive history. I approach this dynamic as an isomorphism of symbolism and biology and argue that just as contemporary philosophy has, through the work of Catherine Malabou, traced the symbolization of the biological, aesthetic criticism should seek to trace the biologization of the symbolic, that is, should seek to trace the way biology imposes its presence as an ontological piece of representation. Working my way back from the prominent appearance of three specific tropes in naturalist texts, I demonstrate within this dynamic that the aesthetic image of life asserts its plasticity against an impossible transcendental alterity, an alterity too long taken for granted in critical practice.

Graduation Semester

2018-05

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/101275

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2018 Brandon Carr

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