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Title Speculative realism and science fiction / Brian Willems.
Author Willems, Brian, author.
Publisher Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2017]
Copyright ©2017


Status Loan Type Location Shelf-mark
 In Library  Standard  Library Level 9 Annexe  Gen Lit J470.S3 WIL2  

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Description x, 223 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
ISBN 9781474422697 hardback
1474422691 hardback
9781474422703 paperback
1474422705 paperback
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-219) and index.
Contents Introduction -- The Zug effect -- Divine paraphrase : Cormac McCarthy -- Double-vision : Neil Gaiman -- Subtraction and contradiction : China Miéville -- Tension and phase : Doris Lessing -- Animal death : Paolo Bacigalupi -- Transcription : Kim Stanley Robinson -- Conclusion.
Summary One of the reasons that speculative materialism challenges anthropomorphism is that a human-centred approach to the environment is leading to ecological collapse. Therefore, when non-human things are taken to be as equally valid objects of investigation as humans, a more responsible and truthful view of the world takes place. Brian Willems draws on the science fiction of Cormac McCarthy, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Doris Lessing and Kim Stanley Robinson alongside speculative materialists including Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux and Jane Bennett. By questioning it, these writers and philosophers both develop and challenge anthropomorphism. Willems looks at how nonsense and sense exist together in science fiction, the way that language is not a guarantee of personhood, the role of vision in relation to identity formation, the difference between metamorphosis and modulation, representations of non-human deaths and the function of plasticity within the Anthropocene.
Series Speculative realism.
Library Class Gen Lit J470.S3
Subject Science fiction -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc.
Anthropomorphism.

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