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Radiant Beings: Narratives of Contamination and Mutation in Literatures of the Anthropocene

Ferebee, Kristin Michelle
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1554724339910557

Abstract Details

2019, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
The Anthropocene era— a term put forward to differentiate the timespan in which human activity has left a geological mark on the Earth, and which is most often now applied to what J.R. McNeill labels the post-1945 “Great Acceleration”— has seen a proliferation of narratives that center around questions of radioactive, toxic, and other bodily contamination and this contamination’s potential effects. Across literature, memoir, comics, television, and film, these narratives play out the cultural anxieties of a world that is itself increasingly figured as contaminated. In this dissertation, I read examples of these narratives as suggesting that behind these anxieties lies a more central anxiety concerning the sustainability of Western liberal humanism and its foundational human figure. Without celebrating contamination, I argue that the very concept of what it means to be “contaminated” must be rethought, as representations of the contaminated body shape and shaped by a nervous policing of what counts as “human.” To this end, I offer a strategy of posthuman/ist reading that draws on new materialist approaches from the Environmental Humanities, and mobilize this strategy to highlight the ways in which narratives of contamination from Marvel Comics to memoir are already rejecting the problematic ideology of the human and envisioning what might come next.
Thomas Davis (Advisor)
Jared Gardner (Committee Member)
Brian McHale (Committee Member)
Rebekah Sheldon (Committee Member)
348 p.
Gender Studies; Literature
environmental humanities; posthumanism; comics studies; ecocriticism

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Ferebee, K. M. (2019). Radiant Beings: Narratives of Contamination and Mutation in Literatures of the Anthropocene [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1554724339910557

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Ferebee, Kristin. Radiant Beings: Narratives of Contamination and Mutation in Literatures of the Anthropocene. 2019. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1554724339910557.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Ferebee, Kristin. "Radiant Beings: Narratives of Contamination and Mutation in Literatures of the Anthropocene." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1554724339910557

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1554724339910557
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© 2019, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.