Brute MeaningPub Date : 2019-03-31DOI: 10.1093/JVCULT/VCZ002
D. Trotter
{"title":"A Media Theory Approach to Representations of ‘Nervous Illness’ in the Long Nineteenth Century","authors":"D. Trotter","doi":"10.1093/JVCULT/VCZ002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JVCULT/VCZ002","url":null,"abstract":"The investigation conducted here focuses on two very remarkable asylum memoirs – one published in 1838, the other in 1840 – by John Perceval, a self-proclaimed ‘insane and nervous patient’. It makes use of recent developments in the study of media – in particular, the theory of ‘cultural techniques’ – to explore the fascination Perceval evinced in his memoirs for some of the more mundane architectural features of the various institutions in which he found himself: a glass door, iron veranda blinds. Equally troubling to him was the human mechanism consti-tuted by the asylum attendants. Other theoretical contexts are supplied by Friedrich Kittler’s analysis of Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness , Theodo Adorno’s rumination on refrigerators, and Gregory Bateson’s application of information and cybernetic theory to the study of psychosis and alcoholism as pathologies of communication (in 1961, Bateson produced the only modern edition of Perceval’s writings). Perceval’s books are books of com-plaint. They are repetitive, snobbish, and embittered. But they include remarkable passages of commentary and description which make it clear that for him insanity was a process, not a condition: a process which could be reversed. His account of the crucial stages in that process coincides with an enhanced attention to infrastructure as medium or cultural technique. Insanity was the mediated life gone horribly wrong.","PeriodicalId":401334,"journal":{"name":"Brute Meaning","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114407629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Brute MeaningPub Date : 2008-04-01DOI: 10.16995/NTN.472
D. Trotter
{"title":"Household Clearances in Victorian Fiction","authors":"D. Trotter","doi":"10.16995/NTN.472","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/NTN.472","url":null,"abstract":"The deathbed apart, there are few scenes more profoundly disturbing in nineteenth-century fiction than the household clearance, or the process of 'selling up': the identification of domestic material goods for sale at auction, either in situ, or elsewhere. Of course, we shouldn't be surprised at this, if the Victorians took the idea of home anything like as seriously as they made out. How could such a violation or wilful sacrifice of domesticity not be profoundly disturbing? This essay argues that scenes of household clearance in nineteenth-century fiction possess a density and an edge which exceed any shock they might have administered to the sensibilities of the house-proud. Such scenes expose to critical view an aspect of existence otherwise generally understood, then as now, not to require or to benefit from illumination. The aims of the essay are twofold: 1) to demonstrate the pervasiveness of scenes of household clearance in Victorian fiction, with reference to Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot, Hardy, and others; 2) to put forward an explanation for the imaginative charge they carry, which runs counter to a strong emphasis in the current understanding of nineteenth-century fiction's perspective on a newly abundant material culture.","PeriodicalId":401334,"journal":{"name":"Brute Meaning","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133341701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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