Dismissing the Body. Strange Cases of Fictional Invisibility. n. 4

Descrizione

The body and its representations have recently drawn the attention of a growing number of scholars and critics from different disciplines. This interest reflects the rapid transformations that the body as a cultural subject has undergone in the last quarter of the century, a period which has also seen another dramatic set of chamges as far as the theories of perception, sight, and vision are concerned. The invisible body, therefore, combines two major elements of interest, being the problematic, multi-layered expression of a conflict between asserting and dismissing not only the bosy ub utself, but also what is called “identity”. Among the fictional representations of the body, the rich imagery connected to invisibility offers a wide range of perspectives pointing to different fields, from physics and philosophy to gender studies and virtual reality. At the core of the subject, howerver, there lies the double nature of the body as a phenomenological reality and as a sing, both of which are exposed to social change, political pressure, and literary manipulation. It follows that, in order to give a satisfactory portrayal of some of the most renowned invisible characters to befound in narrative, it is necessary to explore the implications of the traditional dominion of sight over the other senses in Western literature, the collapse of biogenetic boundaries, the clash or juxtaposition between science and magic, and also the metaphors connected with dissolving, vanishing, and falling to pieces. Focussing mainly on narative and cinema from Great Britain and the U.S., but following a comparative approach which does non exclude occasional excursions into other literatures, this book takes into consideration several main issues: the cases of fragmentation, disguise, and mutilation which share some basic aspects with invisibility; invisibility as the result od scientific experimentation; blindness; the supernatural side of invisibility; metaphorical invisibilities; and the transorganic or post-human body.