Poison and Poisoning in Science, Fiction and Cinema: Precarious Identities

Description

This book is about poison and poisonings; it explores the facts, fears and fictions that surround this fascinating topic. Poisons attract attention because they are both dangerous and hard to discover. Secretive and invisible, they are a challenging object of representation. How do science studies, literature, and especially film—the medium of the visible—explain and show what is hidden? How can we deal with uncertainties emerging from the ambivalence of dangerous substances? These considerations lead the editors of this volume to the notion of “precarious identities” as a key discursive marker of poisons and related substances. This book is unique in facilitating a multi-faceted conversation between disciplines. It draws on examples from historical cases of poisoning; figurations of uncertainty and blurred boundaries in literature; and cinematic examples, from early cinema and arthouse to documentary and blockbuster. The contributions work with concepts from gender studies, new materialism, post-colonialism, deconstructivism, motif studies, and discourse analysis. Front Matter ....Pages i-xviii Introduction (Heike Klippel, Bettina Wahrig, Anke Zechner)....Pages 1-11 Front Matter ....Pages 13-13 Female Poisoners in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Julia Saatz)....Pages 15-36 The Truth About the Lafarge Affair: Poisons in Salons, Academies, and Courtrooms During the Nineteenth Century (José Ramón Bertomeu-Sánchez)....Pages 37-56 “Nature Is Lopsided”: Muscarine as Scientific and Literary Fascinosum in Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Documents in the Case (Bettina Wahrig)....Pages 57-73 “Everything Stays Down Where It’s Wounded”: Precarious Ontologies and Ecologies of Poison (Stephan Trinkaus)....Pages 75-86 Front Matter ....Pages 87-87 “Life and Death Appeared to Me Ideal Bounds”: Investigations into Life, Death, Resuscitation, and “Vegetable Poisons” in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain (Silvia Micheletti)....Pages 89-102 “These Pale Alchemies”: Lucretia Borgia in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Martina Mittag)....Pages 103-118 Magic Matters: On Sexed Bodies and Early Film (Kathrin Peters)....Pages 119-134 Fun and Games: The Joy of Poisoning in Children’s Literature (Sylvia A. Pamboukian)....Pages 135-145 Nuclear Power Subjects: Superheroes and Energetic Film (André Wendler)....Pages 147-156 Front Matter ....Pages 157-157 From Substance to Phantasm: Poison Motifs in Narrative Cinema (Heike Klippel)....Pages 159-175 Cinema and the Motif of Poison as Intermingling (Anke Zechner)....Pages 177-189 Serial Poisoning: Actualizations of the “Yellow Peril” in 1960s Fu Manchu Films (Maja Figge)....Pages 191-209 Cinema as Ontoxicological Mit-Gift and Being-With as a Given in Societies of Enforced Precarity (Drehli Robnik)....Pages 211-222 Autoimmunity and Sexual Difference in Todd Haynes’ Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Poison, and Safe (Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky)....Pages 223-236 Front Matter ....Pages 237-237 Identity, Precariousness, and Poison: A Brief and Political Outlook (Heiko Stoff)....Pages 239-249 Back Matter ....Pages 251-254