In this Book

summary
Taking as his point of departure Norbert Weiner’s statement that information is basic to understanding materialism in our era, Ronald Schleifer shows how discoveries of modern physics have altered conceptions of matter and energy and the ways in which both information theory and the study of literature can enrich these conceptions. Expanding the reductive notion of “the material” as simply matter and energy, he formulates a new, more inclusive idea of materialism. Schleifer’s project attempts to bridge the divisions between the humanities and the sciences and to create a nonreductive materialism for the information age. He presents a materialistic account of human bodily experience by delving into language and literature that powerfully represents our faces, voices, hands, and pain. For example, he examines the material resources of poetic “literariness” as it is revealed in the condition of Tourette’s syndrome. Schleifer also investigates gestures of the hand in the formation of sociality, and he studies pain as both a physiological and phenomenological experience. This ambitious work explores physiological analyses, evolutionary explanations, and semiotic descriptions of materialism to reveal how aspects of physical existence discover meaning in experience.

Table of Contents

restricted access Download Full Book
  1. Cover
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Title Page, Copyright, Dedication
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Contents
  2. pp. vii-viii
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Acknowledgments
  2. pp. ix-xii
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Introduction: Materialist Literature
  2. pp. xiii-xxvi
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 1. Intangible Materialism
  2. pp. 1-34
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 2. The Faces of Consilience: Levels of Understanding and the Negative Science of Semiotics
  2. pp. 35-70
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 3. Material Voices: Tourette Syndrome, Neurobiology, and the Affect of Poetry
  2. pp. 71-96
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 4. The History of the Hand: Peirce’s Index, Attention, and the Power of Narrative
  2. pp. 97-126
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 5. Pain, Memory, and Religious Suffering: Materiality and the Subject of Poetry
  2. pp. 127-170
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Notes
  2. pp. 171-206
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Bibliography
  2. pp. 207-220
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Index
  2. pp. 221-244
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. About the Author
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
Back To Top

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless.