Ollie Case

 

“I do not cling to life. I shall be brushed like a bee from a sunflower”: Extinction Aesthetics and The Long Now in The Waves

 

Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (1933) moves beyond anthropocentrism in its understandings of living with the natural world, and the possible future of human extinction. The Waves thus inspires urgent ways of rethinking the position of the human, both materially and temporally, within the nonhuman world. After the First World War, Woolf feared that another international conflict was both likely and would bring with it the end of the human species.

 

As present-day readers, we are ever more aware of the frightening and likely eventuality of hhuman extinction due to numerous possible catastrophes (global pandemics, nuclear wars, disastrous climate crises). Reading The Waves in this context reveals the ways in which Woolf seizes the idea of a world without humans as an opportunity to continue an experiment. which runs throughout her writing: to restructure the human/nonhuman relationship in fiction.

 

One of the most distinctive ways in which The Waves takes up this mantle is through a redefinition of human mortality from within an ontology of nonhuman immortality. Dislodging anthropocentrism in this way challenges the reader to rethink their position in

time as well as place, as human lifespans become dwarfed by the longevity of ecosystems and ecological timescales.

 

In Time and Responsibility (1999), the manifesto of The Long Now Foundation, Stewart Brand recommends expanding concepts of the present to include not just today or this week, but entire generations, even millennia, in order to think and act responsibly

towards the natural environment. This paper argues The Waves’ explorations of deep ecological timescales and radical reconfigurations of the human relationship with ecosystems constitute a distinctly modernist step towards this conceptualisation of the long now.

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Ollie Case is in the final year of his PhD at the University of Worcester. His research combines posthuman critical theory and Bergsonian philosophies of time to find new understandings of Virginia Woolf’s late novels which reposition her as a key author for the posthuman turn in literary studies. Ollie’s recently published chapter titled ‘Human/Nonhuman Symbiosis in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando,’ appears in Critical Insights: Virginia Woolf, (Salem Press: Grey House Publishing, 2022), and he has forthcoming chapters in Revisiting Modernism: Texts and Contexts (Lexington Books, 2023) and Virginia Woolf and Ethics (Clemson University Press, 2023).

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Sidonie Sutton

 

Why Authentic Media Representations of Disability Can Broaden the Spectrum of Human

 

It can be said that our values and practices, both individual and communal, are somewhat influenced by the media we consume (Tuchman & Benét, 1978). Therefore, when we are consistently confronted with mainstream media representations of disability that rely upon inimical stereotypes, there is bound to be a real-world impact on our perception of disabled existence in a world that is assumed to be largely non-disabled. Disability theorists have begun to unpick this complex web of perception, and to realise its impact upon disabled communities (Garland-Thomson, 2002 & Stiker, 1999). Using the theoretical framework of “Crip Theory” (McRuer, 2006) allows for an investigation of these pernicious cultural stereotypes, whilst ensuring that the disabled figure is not relegated to the margins of this growing discourse. Inadequate media representation of disability is a collective issue because in allowing minority cultures to be stifled by dominant, ableist narratives, we lose the ability to experience the full spectrum of human potentiality (Williams, 1980). Even as academics attempt to retrieve disabled experiences from the wasteland of representational oblivion, voices are lost.

 

Specifically, consideration of the (under)representation of invisible disabilities is scarce. Furthermore, the presence of ableism in academia (Brown, 2018) means that the unique perspectives of disabled academics are oftentimes erased. These issues further narrow our access to an understanding of the diversity of human experience. We can address these shortcomings by championing disabled creators in mainstream media (Jones, 2022), and by adopting an interdisciplinary, autoethnographic approach to our academic practice (Forber-Pratt, 2015).

 

Sidonie Sutton is a third year English Literature and Media & Culture student at the University of Worcester. She has a keen interest in the interdisciplinary nature of the humanities, and in Disability Studies. She intends to start an MA in English at the University next year. 

 

 

James O’Toole

 

Frankenstein and The Island of Dr Moreau push the reader to confront the fringes of human nature and morality against natural backdrops of liminal, ‘uncharted territories’, drawing overt comparisons between geographical exploration and a more contemplative, internal exploration of human bodies. These texts exist in conversation with contemporary scientific discourses surrounding the experiments of Luigi Galvani and Charles Darwin, framing the science of each narrative as existing in the slim space between impossibility in the present and scientific fact in the future. Thus, I have taken inspiration from neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero’s controversial and dubious claims that he would carry out the first living human head transplant, a process known as cephalosomatic anastomosis. By choosing a procedure that is on the cutting edge of science, there is a greater degree of uncertainty, and thus space for imagination and horror.

 

In this paper, I discuss my creative and critical approaches to writing the opening of a novel capturing one human’s experience receiving this procedure, situated in the gothic science fiction genre. Drawing from secondary scientific research, literary theory and the practice of creative writing itself, I discuss the rationale behind the structural devices and thematic interests in my project. In terms of structure, I will consider the biological implications of Barthes’ view of the text as ‘a tissue of citations’, and how I have used this framework to represent the interruption of bodily functions (such as sense and perception of space) in the text through narrative interruptions and fragmentation. I will also outline how I have used an epistolary form and textual annotations to represent the slippage of identity and bodily territory that such a transformative transplantation could create. In this way, I will demonstrate where my piece lies in conversation with my literary influences, contemporary theory and biology.

 

James O’Toole is a third year English Literature and Media & Culture student at the University of Worcester. He also intends to start an MA in English at the University next year. 

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Niamh Dolly Fitzpatrick

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In the Early Modern period, it was not uncommon for printed and oral literature such as pamphlets or ballads to utilise the language of monstrosity to describe disabled children as being distinctly unnatural or unhuman, in an attempt to reiterate moral and religious lessons centred upon expediting sin and immorality. Whilst within the last two decades, disability theorists such as Michael Davidson have attempted to disconnect the distorted body from the abnormal soul in Early Modern literature due to how those with disabilities were made into a spectacle for the enjoyment of others, within drama of the period playwrights can be seen drawing from the stigma surrounding monstrosity to inform their characterisations. In William Shakespeare’s drama for example, the playwright draws from early modern physiognomy and discussions centring upon relative normativity in his presentation of his villains, often placing his characters as ostracised from their co- characters on the basis of moral, religious, or physical difference. Whilst the call for papers questions ‘What is natural about being human?’, I intend to reverse this question, examining what is unnatural about the figure of the villain being presented on the Early Modern stage. Focusing on unnatural humanity, the queer and new historicist approach of this paper will firstly examine early modern literature concerning the monstrous to gain an understanding of the societal stigma surrounding difference in the period. I then intend to examine William Shakespeare’s tragicomedy The Tempest, noting how the playwright can be seen utilising the societal prejudice surrounding disability, and the bias against women in the period, in his composition of Caliban’s body; a monstrous and effeminized body which becomes the source or location of the character’s villainy.

 

Niamh Dolly Fitzpatrick is a part-time PhD student in the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Worcester. Niamh’s main research is focused on drama in the Early Modern period (1590-1714). Her PhD research concerns theatrical villainy in the late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Century (1660-1714). Niamh is conducting a new historicist, interdisciplinary study with the intent of investigating how societal prejudice in the period informed theatrical villainy. By investigating the influence social bias bore upon dramatic writing, she intends to deepen our understanding into societal prejudice, learning both its origins and how, through the medium of theatre, prejudicial thought against those who were deemed different was allowed to flourish as a form of popular entertainment.

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Ula Skalmowska and Kasia Jaworska

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‘On Politics in Romeo i Julia, Warsaw 1968’

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In his plays, William Shakespeare navigates the complexity of human nature. Polish people found kinship in the Bard, like most European nations forging their identity during the nineteenth century. Experiences Shakespeare describes, such as fear, oppression and – what Jan Kott defined in the 1960s as – “the Grand mechanism of power” were familiar and relatable to a culture that fought for hundreds of years for independence and national identity. Alongside, Shakespeare’s works were read anew for their focus on passionate love -- both for the people and for the fatherland – whose two dimensions (personal and social) were awakened by nineteenth-century European Romanticism.

 

Such themes, explored in Romeo and Juliet, were at the heart of the stage production of the play which opened on 10 February 1968 in the Masovian Land Theatre in Warsaw. These were very turbulent times: in March that year, students of the Warsaw University organized a strike in response to the ban of the performance of Mickiewicz’s play Dziady [Forefathers] introduced by the communist regime. The historical importance and subject matter of Poland’s national poet’s play made this decision even more symbolic: the authorities were afraid of its anti-Russian sentiments. The ban and following protests were the culmination of the rising tension between the students and Polish intelligentsia, and the Soviet regime in place in Poland. This was the backdrop against which the Polish director Wanda Wróblewska set Romeo and Juliet in her small, unique theatre. The motive of the clash between generations, the ancient grudge and star-crossed lovers resonated with her, the cast and the viewers. To Wróblewska, the audience’s opinion and participation was integral to the production. Surveys handed out after the performances capture how the public interpreted and related to the characters at the time. Our presentation argues that the need for freedom and asserting one’s own identity is a natural part of the human experience – back in the Eastern Bloc in 1968 and now.

 

Ula Skalmowska is a postgraduate student of English Literature at the University of Warsaw. She is currently writing her dissertation on the duality of Oscar Wilde’s life and works in the context of Victorian morality and hypocrisy. She is interested in Fin de Siècle as well as Decadent and Aesthetic movements. Beside literature, Ula’s biggest passion is music.

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Kasia Jaworska is a postgraduate student of English Literature at the University of Warsaw. She is currently writing her dissertation on female bodily autonomy in contemporary Irish literature and visual arts.

 

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Dr Simon Hardy is the Head of Department, History, Politics & Sociology at the University of Worcester. His specialisms include the history of sexuality, the sociology of pornography, and contemporary media coverage of warfare.

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Dr Sharon Young is the course leader for English Literature.at the University of Worcester. Her teaching interests include, Renaissance, Restoration and eighteenth-century literature, women's poetry, and literary theory. Her research focuses mainly on women's poetry of the early modern period, Renaissance revenge tragedy, and women's manuscript culture. Sharon has published on female poets and the critical debates of the early eighteenth century and Mary Leapor.

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Katy Wareham Morris leads the BA Hons in Media & Culture at the University of Worcester. She is particularly interested in how digital technologies have changed media industries and the way audiences respond to them. She has also worked in the field of digital social media marketing, creating content, and managing communities, as well as helping to establish the Women’s Equality Party. Katy is currently completing her PhD research in literary gaming, play, and post-queer politics.