1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910821968003321

Autore

Houser Heather

Titolo

Ecosickness in contemporary U.S. fiction : environment and affect / / Heather Houser ; cover design by Julia Kushnirsky

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York ; ; Chichester, England : , : Columbia University Press, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

0-231-16515-3

0-231-53736-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (329 p.)

Collana

Literature Now

Classificazione

HU 1819

Disciplina

810.9/36

Soggetti

American literature - History and criticism

Environmentalism in literature

Diseases in literature

Ecocriticism

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Ecosickness -- 2. AIDS Memoirs out of the City: Discordant Natures -- 3. Richard Powers's Strange Wonder -- 4. Infinite Jest's environmental Case for Disgust -- 5. The Anxiety of Intervention in Leslie Marmon Silko and Marge Piercy -- Conclusion: How Does It Feel? -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

The 1970's brought a new understanding of the biological and intellectual impact of environmental crises on human beings. As efforts to prevent ecological and bodily injury aligned, a new literature of sickness emerged. "Ecosickness fiction" imaginatively rethinks the link between these forms of threat and the sick body to bring readers to environmental consciousness. Tracing the development of ecosickness through a compelling archive of contemporary U.S. novels and memoirs, Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction establishes that we cannot comprehend environmental and medical dilemmas through data alone and must call on the sometimes surprising emotions that literary metaphors, tropes, and narratives deploy. In chapters on David Foster Wallace, Richard Powers, Leslie Marmon Silko, Marge Piercy, Jan Zita



Grover, and David Wojnarowicz, Heather Houser shows how narrative affects such as wonder and disgust organize perception of an endangered world and orient us ethically toward it. The study builds the connective tissue between contemporary literature, ecocriticism, affect studies, and the medical humanities. It also positions ecosickness fiction relative to emergent forms of environmentalism and technoscientific innovations such as regenerative medicine and alternative ecosystems. Houser models an approach to contemporary fiction as a laboratory for affective changes that spark or squelch ethical projects.