Science and Affect in Contemporary Literature: Bodies of Knowledge

(Hardback)

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Moving from the micro world of quantum physics to the macro scales of earth science, this book considers how, in contemporary literature, affective experiences like desire, suffering, and anxiety shape scientific persons, practices, and products. This book brings into dialogue close readings of scientific writing and contemporary literary works by authors like Jeanette Winterson, Richard Powers, Hanya Yanagihara, Thalia Field, and Jenny Offill. Combining narrative and affect studies, it uses formal strategies such as moving metaphor, visceral or affective description, plot-level analogy, and contraction to engage with Western scientific epistemologies, which still tends towards the impassive, universal, and objective. While each chapter focuses on a different field (or fields) of science, all foreground bodieshuman and nonhumanas a way of exploring knowledge production. Through close readings, it argues that select scientific stories raise important questions about how we define knowledge and who (and what) we invite into its processes of production.

Author Bio

Shannon Lambert is a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University, Belgium.