Modernist Parasites: Bioethics, Dependency, and Literature, post-1900 analyzes biological and social parasites in the political, scientific, and literary imagination. Initially referring to a guest who exchanged stories for a place at the dinner table, Sebastian Williams argues that the parasite has developed into a vile and hated figure who drains energy from the body politic. With the rise of Darwinism, eugenics, and parasitology in the late nineteenth century, he posits that "parasite" became a biosocial term for Humanity's ultimate Other-a dangerous antagonist. But many modernist authors reconsider the parasite to critique the liberal humanist sense of an independent Self. Considering work by Isaac Rosenberg, John Steinbeck, Franz Kafka, Clarice Lispector, Nella Larsen, and George Orwell, among others, the author argues that even parasites have their place in a posthumanist world. Ultimately, he argues the parasite inherently depends on others for its survival, illustrating the limits of ethical models that privilege the discrete individual above interdependent communities.
Sebastian Williams is assistant professor of English at Davis & Elkins College in West Virginia.
Table of Contents Dedication Acknowledgments List of Figures Introduction Chapter 1: Contagion, Pests, and Parasites in Trench Poetry Chapter 2: "The Million Enemies of the Earth": Parasitism and Poverty in Great Depression Literature Chapter 3: "Monstrous Vermin": Becoming the Modernist Parasite Chapter 4: "Parasitism & Prostitution-Or Negation": The Parasite in Modernist Feminism Chapter 5: The Tramp: Social Parasitism, Vagrancy, and Health Epilogue Bibliography About the Author
We tend to think of parasites as greedy, self-serving figures. Yet Modernist Parasites explores what these figures have given to, rather than taken from, literary writers. From the First World War poetry of Isaac Rosenberg to the experimental writing of Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector, Williams argues that the figure of the parasite is central to modernist writers' imagining of a relational, interdependent model of selfhood - one that productively troubles the liberal humanist conception of the self as bounded, singular, and autonomous. Readers of modernism, animal studies, and posthumanism will find much to draw on this generous and generative study of literary parasitism. -- Rachel Murray, University of Bristol
