A fascinating analysis of anonymous publication centuries before the digital age Everywhere and Nowhere considers the ubiquity of anonymity and mediation in the publication and circulation of eighteenth-century British literature—before the Romantic creation of the “author”—and what this means for literary criticism. Anonymous authorship was typical of the time, yet literary scholars and historians have been generally unable to account for it as anything more than a footnote or curiosity. Mark Vareschi shows the entangled relationship between mediation and anonymity, revealing the nonhuman agency of the printed text. Drawing richly on quantitative analysis and robust archival work, Vareschi brings together philosophy, literary theory, and media theory in a trenchant analysis, uncovering a history of textual engagement and interpretation that does not hinge on the known authorial subject. In discussing anonymous poetry, drama, and the novel along with anonymously published writers such as Daniel Defoe, Frances Burney, and Walter Scott, he unveils a theory of mediation that renews broader questions about agency and intention. Vareschi argues that textual intentionality is a property of nonhuman, material media rather than human subjects alone, allowing the anonymous literature of the eighteenth century to speak to contemporary questions of meaning in the philosophy of language. Vareschi closes by exploring dubious claims about the death of anonymity and the reexplosion of anonymity with the coming of the digital. Ultimately, Everywhere and Nowhere reveals the long history of print anonymity so central to the risks and benefits of the digital culture.
A fascinating analysis of anonymous publication centuries before the digital age Everywhere and Nowhere considers the ubiquity of anonymity and mediation in the publication and circulation of eighteenth-century British literature—before the Romantic creation of the “author”—and what this means for literary criticism. Anonymous authorship was typical of the time, yet literary scholars and historians have been generally unable to account for it as anything more than a footnote or curiosity. Mark Vareschi shows the entangled relationship between mediation and anonymity, revealing the nonhuman agency of the printed text. Drawing richly on quantitative analysis and robust archival work, Vareschi brings together philosophy, literary theory, and media theory in a trenchant analysis, uncovering a history of textual engagement and interpretation that does not hinge on the known authorial subject. In discussing anonymous poetry, drama, and the novel along with anonymously published writers such as Daniel Defoe, Frances Burney, and Walter Scott, he unveils a theory of mediation that renews broader questions about agency and intention. Vareschi argues that textual intentionality is a property of nonhuman, material media rather than human subjects alone, allowing the anonymous literature of the eighteenth century to speak to contemporary questions of meaning in the philosophy of language. Vareschi closes by exploring dubious claims about the death of anonymity and the reexplosion of anonymity with the coming of the digital. Ultimately, Everywhere and Nowhere reveals the long history of print anonymity so central to the risks and benefits of the digital culture.
From ancient cave paintings of honey bee nests to modern science’s richly diversified investigation of honey bee biology and its applications, the human imagination has long been captivated by the mysterious and highly sophisticated behavior of this paragon among insect societies. In the first broad treatment of honey bee biology to appear in decades, Mark Winston provides rare access to the world of this extraordinary insect. In a bright and engaging style, Winston probes the dynamics of the honey bee’s social organization. He recreates for us the complex infrastructure of the nest, describes the highly specialized behavior of workers, queens, and drones, and examines in detail the remarkable ability of the honey bee colony to regulate its functions according to events within and outside the nest. Winston integrates into his discussion the results of recent studies, bringing into sharp focus topics of current bee research. These include the exquisite architecture of the nest and its relation to bee physiology; the intricate division of labor and the relevance of a temporal caste structure to efficient functioning of the colony; and, finally, the life-death struggles of swarming, supersedure, and mating that mark the reproductive cycle of the honey bee. The Biology of the Honey Bee not only reviews the basic aspects of social behavior, ecology, anatomy, physiology, and genetics, it also summarizes major controversies in contemporary honey bee research, such as the importance of kin recognition in the evolution of social behavior and the role of the well-known dance language in honey bee communication. Thorough, well-illustrated, and lucidly written, this book will for many years be a valuable resource for scholars, students, and beekeepers alike.
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