Spider Web, Labyrinth, Tightrope Walk: Networks in US American Literature and Culture

Regina Schober

Published by De Gruyter 2023

Spider Web, Labyrinth, Tightrope Walk

Networks in US American Literature and Culture

Regina Schober

Volume 82 in the series Buchreihe der Anglia / Anglia Book Series

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111060590

Overview
Contents

About this book

Spider Web, Labyrinth, Tightrope Walk explores the shifting functions of the network as a metaphor, model, and as an epistemological framework in US American literature and culture from the 19^th century until today. The book critically inquires into the literary, cultural, philosophical, and scientific rhetoric, values, and ideological underpinnings that have given rise to the network concept. Literature and culture play a major role in the ways in which networks have been imagined and how they have evolved as conceptual models. This study regards networks as historically emergent and culturally constructed formations closely tied with the development of knowledge technologies in the process of modernization as well as with an increasingly critical awareness of network technologies and infrastructures. While the rise of the network in scientific, philosophical, political and sociological discourses has received wide attention, this book contributes an important cultural and historical perspective to network theory by demonstrating how US American literature and culture have been key sites for thinking in and about networks in the past two centuries.

Author / Editor information

Regina Schober, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	V
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
Permissions Spider Web, Labyrinth, Tightrope Walk Publicly Available Download PDF	XI
1 Introduction: The Network in US American Literature and Culture Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2 Project(ing an) Interconnected America: Nineteenth Century Visions of Material Networks, Transcendental Links, and Alternative Communities Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	26
3 “A Movement Toward Expanded Connectedness” – Networks of Evolution in Pragmatist and Naturalist Literature Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
4 Mapping Alternatives: Postwar Networks and the Forking Paths of Knowledge Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
5 Recentering the Human: Contemporary Fiction and the Popularization of the Network Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	198
6 Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	281

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Scholars in the fields of literary studies, American studies, (New) media studies, science and technology studies.
Pages
- Front matter: 10
- Main content: 286
Keywords: network model; American literary history; relational epistemology

eBook

Published: August 7, 2023
ISBN: 9783111060590

Hardcover

Published: August 7, 2023
ISBN: 9783111060262