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Why was D.H. Lawrence preoccupied with the enigma of the human as thinking matter? This first sustained study of Lawrence and science shows how 'posthuman' conceptions of a material kinship between humans, animals and machines can transform our understanding of Lawrence's work and of its complex relationship with scientific epistemologies. Through detailed readings of evolutionary philosophy, and of the 'new Bergsonism' of Deleuze and others, Wallace provides a radical reappraisal of Lawrence in terms of an 'antihumanist (or posthumanist) humanism' (Hardt and Negri).
List of contents
Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction PART I: SCIENCE Thinking Matter Science, Ideology and the 'New' Writing Matter: Science, Language and Materialism PART II: THE POSTHUMAN Posthuman D.H. Lawrence? Animals Humans Machines Postscript: On Abstraction Bibliography Index
About the author
JEFF WALLACE is Principal Lecturer in English at the University of Glamorgan, UK. His previous, co-edited books are Charles Darwin's Origin of Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays, Raymond Williams Now, and Gothic Modernisms. He is an editor of the journal Key Words and of the book series Texts in Culture.
Summary
This first sustained study of Lawrence and science shows how 'posthuman' conceptions of a material kinship between humans, animals and machines can transform our understanding of Lawrence's work and of its complex relationship with scientific epistemologies.
Additional text
'This ambitious and wide-ranging book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Lawrence and in contemporary debates about the 'posthuman'. Wallace reassesses Lawrence's engagement with the science of his day, and traces the anticipation in his work of much subsequent thinking about self, other, and the crumbling thresholds between humans, animals and machines. D. H. Lawrence, Science and the Posthuman is an important contribution to literary studies which can be read continuously or dipped in and out of for pleasure' - N.H. Reeve, Senior Lecturer, University of Wales Swansea, UK
'A truly pioneering study, the first to show just how seriously Lawrence took science despite his frequent denunciations of it...It is unusual to encounter someone who combines an intimate knowledge of Lawrence's work with such a sure grasp of much wider cultural and theoretical issues...Ambitious and wide-ranging yet meticulous and scholarly, this book will make an outstanding contribution both to Lawrence studies and to the wider field of science, literature and the posthuman' - Dr. Anne Fernihough, Girton College, Cambridge University, UK
'[A] study of impressive range and depth which greatly extends our knowledge of Lawrence and the context of his contradictory and shifting patterns of thought. The argument is original, gripping and often superbly sustained, with a full and rich sense of both text and context.' - English
'Wallace reading of Lawrence suggests some of the ways in which Lawrence's imagining of the posthuman might lead to a new, utopian accommodation between human and machine....Jeff Wallace's wonderfully elegant new book'. - Textual Practice
Report
'This ambitious and wide-ranging book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Lawrence and in contemporary debates about the 'posthuman'. Wallace reassesses Lawrence's engagement with the science of his day, and traces the anticipation in his work of much subsequent thinking about self, other, and the crumbling thresholds between humans, animals and machines. D. H. Lawrence, Science and the Posthuman is an important contribution to literary studies which can be read continuously or dipped in and out of for pleasure' - N.H. Reeve, Senior Lecturer, University of Wales Swansea, UK
'A truly pioneering study, the first to show just how seriously Lawrence took science despite his frequent denunciations of it...It is unusual to encounter someone who combines an intimate knowledge of Lawrence's work with such a sure grasp of much wider cultural and theoretical issues...Ambitious and wide-ranging yet meticulous and scholarly, this book will make an outstanding contribution both to Lawrence studies and to the wider field of science, literature and the posthuman' - Dr. Anne Fernihough, Girton College, Cambridge University, UK
'[A] study of impressive range and depth which greatly extends our knowledge of Lawrence and the context of his contradictory and shifting patterns of thought. The argument is original, gripping and often superbly sustained, with a full and rich sense of both text and context.' - English
'Wallace reading of Lawrence suggests some of the ways in which Lawrence's imagining of the posthuman might lead to a new, utopian accommodation between human and machine....Jeff Wallace's wonderfully elegant new book'. - Textual Practice
