Posthuman Pathogenesis: Contagion in Literature, Arts, and Media

Description

This multi-vocal assemblage of literary and cultural responses to contagions provides insights into the companionship of posthumanities, environmental humanities, and medical humanities to shed light on how we deal with complex issues like communicable diseases in contemporary times. Examining imaginary and real contagions, ranging from Jeep and SHEVA to plague, HIV/AIDS, and COVID-19, Posthuman Pathogenesis discusses the inextricable links between nature and culture, matter and meaning-making practices, and the human and the nonhuman. Dissecting pathogenic nonhuman bodies in their interactions with their human counterparts and the environment, the authors of this volume raise their diverse voices with two primary aims: to analyse how contagions trigger a drive to survival, and chaotic, liberating, and captivating impulses, and to focus on the viral interpolations in socio-political and environmental systems as a meeting point of science, technology, and fiction, blending social reality and myth. Following the premises of the post-qualitative turn and presenting a differentiated experience of contagion, this ‘rhizomatic’ compilation thus offers a non-hierarchised array of essays, composed of a multiplicity of genders, geographies, and generations. Cover Title Page Table of Contents Figures Tables Contributors Foreword: Posthumanism in the Year of COVID-19 An Implosive Introduction: Haunted Experiences, Affective Assemblages, and Collective Imaginings Part I Discontents of the Human and Its Others 1 Yearning for the Human in Posthuman Times: On Camus’ Tragic Humanism 2 Viruses as Posthuman Biocultural Creatures: Parasites, Biopolitics, and Contemporary Literary Reflections Part II Pathogenic Temporalities 3 Viral Temporalities: Literatures of Disease and Posthuman Conceptions of Time 4 Pathogenic Hugs and Ambiguous Times: The Joy Epidemic in Gumball Part III Pestilentia Loquens: Narrative Agency of Disease 5 Symbiotic Adaptation in Posthuman Feminist Environs: Viral Becomings in Nicola Griffith’s Ammonite 6 Power Or Despair: Contagious Diseases in Turkish History and Miniature Paintings Part IV Contagious Networks of Communication 7 Hyperobjects, Network Ontologies, and the Pandemic Response in Greg Bear’s Darwin’s Radio 8 Entangled Humans, Entangled Languages: A Posthumanist Applied Linguistic Analysis of COVID-19 On Reddit Part V From Medical Humanities to Medical Posthumanities 9 HIV, Dependency, and Prophylactic Narrative in Bryan Washington’s “Waugh” 10 The Vampire as Posthumanist Pharmakon: Towards a Critical Medical Humanities CODA: Affirming the Pathogenesis Afterword: Posthuman Healing and Revealing Index