Bodies of Work Volume 26 — November 2020 Edited by Isabelle Wentorth, Vivien Nara, and Ruby Kilroy
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A JOURNAL OF LITERATURE, ARTS, AND CULTURE AND ARTS, LITERATURE, OF JOURNAL A VOLUME 26 — NOVEMBER 2020 NOVEMBER — 26 VOLUME BODIES OF WORK VOLUME 26 — NOVEMBER 2020 PHILAMENT ACKNOWLEDGES AND THANKS SUPRA FOR ITS SUPPORT OF POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH AND IDEAS. ISSN 1449-0471 EDITED BY ISABELLE WENTORTH, VIVIEN NARA, AND RUBY KILROY BODIES OF WORK Philament is an open-access journal of scholarship VOLUME 26 by postgraduate and early-career researchers in literature, arts, and cultural studies. All articles NOVEMBER 2020 in Philament are peer-reviewed. For more infor- mation about Philament, please see http://www. ISSN 1449-0471 philamentjournal.com. SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORS Copyright in all articles and associated materials Isabelle Wentworth, in this journal are held exclusively by the respec- Vivien Nara, and Ruby Kilroy tive authors, unless otherwise specified. All other rights and copyrights in this journal, including MANAGING EDITOR AND DESIGN material published on the journal’s website, are Chris Rudge held by Philament and their respective creators. No portion of this journal may be reproduced, WEBSITE by any process or technique, without written Elle Williams authority of the managing editor. COVER IMAGE For more information about the journal, includ- Christine Partl ing submission guidelines, please visit http:// www.philamentjournal.com. To contact the ed- itors, email [email protected]. Books for review may be sent to the following mailing address: Managing Editor, Philament: A Journal of Literature, Arts, and Culture, Room N305, The John Woolley Building (A20), The University of Sydney NSW 2060, Australia. Philament gratefully acknowledges the Sydney University Postgraduate Representative Association (SUPRA) without whose support this volume would not be possible. I II CONTENTS EDITORIAL 1 BODIES OF WORK: AN INTRODUCTION ISABELLE WENTWORTH PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES ENTRAPMENT AND ESTRANGEMENT 9 IN SHIRLEY JACKSON’S GOTHIC FICTION ELIZA VICTORIA 25 “MUSIC BOX” AND “MEAT GRINDER”: CORPOREALITY AND METAPOETICS IN TERRANCE HAYES’S AMERICAN SONNETS FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN CLARE PRYOR 37 CONVERSATIONS WITH COMMODITIES: CONSUMABLE BODIES IN MELINDA BUFTON’S “CONVERSATIONS WITH CHRISTOPHER LANGTON’S I LUV YOU SCULPTURE, 1993” JULIA COOPER CLARK 51 FREE TRADE AND DRUG TRAFFICKING BETWEEN BRITAIN AND CHINA: A POSTCOLONIAL STUDY OF AMITAV GHOSH’S SEA OF POPPIES JEBUN GEETI III PHILAMENT 26 (2020) 73 ERIC ANDRE AND MIKHAIL BAKHTIN’S CARNIVALESQUE BODY LUKE BEATTIE 91 THE ASSASSINATION OF AN ANDALUSIAN POET MARTÍN GARCÍA CALLE 99 INTERSECTION IN MUSIC AND LITERARY STUDIES ROGER HANSFORD 115 DESTROYING NEW YORK CITY: THE EMOTIONAL WORK OF FICTION ELLA COLLINS-WHITE EXCURSIONS 145 ALTERNATIVE POSSIBILITIES ALLAN MCCAY 153 A CONVERSATION WITH THE PERSONIFICATION OF DEATH PHILLIP DUPESOVSKI 161 CONTRIBUTORS’ BIOGRAPHIES IV EDITORIAL BODIES OF WORK: AN INTRODUCTION ISABELLE WENTWORTH THIS TWENTY- SIXTH ISSUE of Philament is based on a conference held at the University of Sydney in 2019. With the theme “Bodies of Work,” the event brought together interdisciplinary research exploring how the body shapes our mind, interactions with others, and the creation of self and art. 1. “Embodied” and “em- The breadth and depth of the speakers’ different perspectives bedded” cognition are terms associated compelled the conference organisers—Vivien Nara, Ruby Kilroy, with second-genera- tion cognitive science, and me—to facilitate a broader forum for these discussions. which deals with “the embodiment of mental With that goal in mind, this special issue of Philament was born. processes and their ex- tension into the world”: Corporeality has long taken centre stage in the see Karin Kukkonen and Marco Caracciolo, “In- humanities, propelled by feminist and postcolonial studies. Both troduction: What Is the ‘Second Generation?,’” fields of scholarship position the body as a vocabulary and a site Style 48, no. 3 (2014): 261. Recently, neurosci- for the continued violence of empire and patriarchy. Recently, entists have found that embodied cognition, concepts of embedded, embodied, and extended cognition have which reframes our un- derstanding of the cog- interacted with theories of transhumanism and posthumanism nitive processes and perhaps consciousness in ways that make us question the limits of the body. The itself, is likely spurred on by the creation of “ad- questions have been useful prompts for new inquiries into the ditional structures” in 1 the brain, including the demarcation between the mind, body, and world. Problems somatosensory cortices, “which enable our brain of bodies and their boundaries challenge not only normative to create an ‘embod- ied mind.”’ See Michael performances of the “human” but reframe the question of what Schaefer and Georg Northoff, “Who Am I: it means to be human. These are always already ethical questions. The Conscious and the Unconscious Self,” Fron- After all, to see a mind embodied and embedded in the world is tiers in Human Neuro- science 11 (2017): 1–5. to explicitly destabilise the idea of a discrete and autonomous 1 PHILAMENT 26 (2020) PHILAMENT 26: BODIES OF WORK humanist subject. While academic emphasis on the body may seem a well-worn focus at this point, there is still more that we may learn from the biological conditions of existence. Although the body constitutes a considerable presence in much scholarly thought, recent events have brought the body from academic sphere into public life. Sick bodies and black bodies are no longer peripheral subjects in public discourse, with the novel coronavirus making its home in more than 50 million bodies worldwide. That number will be much higher by the time this issue is published. In the search for a vaccine, it is understandable that a general perception has formed that science will save humanity. Yet ironically, it is the humanities that have proved necessary to save science. It has become clear that we need an interdisciplinary approach to understand the widespread mistrust and rejection of medical advice and scientific reasoning: 5G conspiracies, extreme partisanship, and mask wars cannot be defeated with science alone. Furthermore, the virus has exposed sociological problems that extend beyond science’s grasp: racial inequalities, unequal access to medical care, mental health crises, and antisocial behavioural patterns. The humanities are called on to analyse these areas. Why, for example, do we comply with social distancing regulations but make almost no effort to examine the activities that likely led to the emergence of the virus, such as wet markets or ecological 2. Sarah Czerny, “Why We Need Social Scienc- destruction? There are also questions surrounding the unfolding es and the Humanities to Live with Covid-19,” biopolitics of the pandemic. As social anthropologist Sarah Czerny Corona Times, May 22, 2020, https://www. asks, will COVID-19 become a “trojan virus,” smuggling unrelated coronatimes.net/ 2 why-social-sciences-hu- agendas into our public discourse? The long-term impact of the manities-covid-19/. deployment of emergency powers is yet unknown. In this new 3. See Kelly Ross, “Watching from Below: world, hypervigilant surveillance and sousveillance—surveillance Racialized Surveillance 3 and Vulnerable Sousveil- from beneath, often recorded on smart phones —render our lance,” PMLA 135, no. 2 (2020): 299–314. bodies objects of inquiry, sites of compliance or deviance. The 2 BODIES OF WORK disciplinary character of measures used to control the movement of bodies in space (quarantine, lockdowns, social distancing) are fairly clear, as are the resulting optics.4 The hypervisibility of the body (and black bodies in particular) is linked to the foreground/background logic of disciplinary power. As people stay at home, those remaining in public spaces are thrust into the foreground—something the Courier Mail made blatantly clear by doxxing two POC teenagers who breached quarantine measures.5 The ethics of these policies and reactions requires 4. See Matthew G. a humanities perspective; yet the pandemic has placed the Hannah, Jan Simon Hutta, and Christoph humanities under significant pressure. For one, it has brought Schemann, “Think- ing Through Covid-19 into focus how much the body matters in the humanities. Even Responses with Fou- cault—An Initial Over- as we write about the importance of the body in our research, our view,” Antipode On- line, May 5, 2020, work is considered to be somehow separate from the body that https://antipodeonline. org/2020/05/05/think- produces it. The assumption is that this work is something we do ing-through-covid-19-re- sponses-with-foucault/. only with our minds: “We humanist intellectuals generally take 5. Ahmed Yussuf, “Me- the body for granted because we are so passionately interested in dia Reporting of Two Queensland Teens: ‘A the life of the mind and the creative arts that express our human Form of Doxxing,’” The 6 Feed, July 31, 2020, spirit,” writes Richard Shusterman. Yet the pandemic has exposed https://www.sbs.com. au/news/the-feed/me- how much academic work relies on the material conditions that dia-reporting-of-two- queensland-teens-a- surround it. Without access to the offices, libraries, or public form-of-doxxing. spaces in which we share ideas, our research changes—or even 6. Richard Shuster- man, “Thinking Through disappears. A survey of 1,020 students at the University of Sydney the Body, Educating for the Humanities: A found that 45 percent of these students expect to be forced to Plea for Somaesthet- ics,” The Journal of suspend or withdraw from their studies in the next six months due Aesthetic Education 7 40, no. 1 (2006): 2. to financial hardship. In-person classes, meetings, and conferences 7. Rebecca Johnson et have been a particular loss to our academic life. The proceedings al., “The Quiet Crisis of PhDs and COVID-19: giving rise to this issue, the “Bodies of Work” conference, was a Reaching the Final Tip- ping Point,” Research fertile forum to consider the collisions and commonalities of many Square, November 11, 2020, https://www.