Philosophy and Literature in Times of Crisis: Challenging our Infatuation with Numbers PDF
Preview Philosophy and Literature in Times of Crisis: Challenging our Infatuation with Numbers
Philosophy and Literature in Times of Crisis Philosophy and Literature in Times of Crisis Challenging Our Infatuation with Numbers Michael Mack NEW YORK • LONDON • NEW DELHI • SYDNEY Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway 50 Bedford Square New York London NY 10018 WC1B 3DP USA UK www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC First published 2014 © Michael Mack, 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mack, Michael, 1969- Philosophy and Literature in Times of Crisis : Challenging Our Infatuation With Numbers / Michael Mack. pages cm Summary: “Analyses the heuristic value of fiction by highlighting literature and philosophy’s potential impact on economics, health care, bioethics, public policy and theology”–Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-62356-046-1 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-62356-649-4 (paperback) 1. Literature and society. 2. Numbers in literature. 3. Literature–Philosophy. I. Title. PN51.M17 2014 809’.93358 – dc23 2013044892 ISBN: HB: 978-1-6235-6046-1 PB: 978-1-6235-6649-4 ePDF: 978-1-6235-6979-2 ePub: 978-1-6235-6845-0 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. I want to dedicate this book to the Leverhulme Trust. Contents Acknowledgements viii Introduction: Objects and Numbers – Our Current Infatuation 1 1 What Is It about Numbers? 19 2 Playing the Numbers: Ethics and Economics 47 3 Certainty and the Predictability of Numbers: The Question of Literary Ethics 75 4 A Disenchantment with Numbers: Philosophy and Literature 107 5 Medicine and the Limits of Numbers 141 6 Towards a Numerical Ambiguity 175 7 Conclusion: From Numbers to the Individual – A New Ethics of Subjectivity 201 Index 229 Acknowledgements This book has been supported by various institutions. It grew out of a most generous research fellowship at the University of Sydney more than 10 years ago. The early conception of the book has also been supported by an ensuing Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship in 2007. The award of a 2012–2013 Leverhulme Research fellowship entitled ‘Science and the Ethics of Literature’ made possible the completion of Philosophy and Literature in Times of Crisis: Challenging Our Infatuation with Numbers. The Leverhulme Trust has been most supportive not only in terms of research funding but also in terms of moral and intellectual encouragement. I am most grateful to the Leverhulme Trust. I would like to thank in particular Jean Cater and Anna Grundy of the Trust for their moral and intellectual support. I want to dedicate this book to the Leverhulme Trust. Haaris Naqvi of Bloomsbury has been as usual a most discerning editor and invaluable intellectual interlocutor. I am most grateful to him for all his great help, support and advice over the years. From the publication of Spinoza and the Specters of Modernity onwards he has been most generous and I cannot thank him enough. I also wish to thank Haaris’s team at Bloomsbury, Laura Murray in particular. Work on this book has been benefitted from discussions at various venues and universities here in the United Kingdom and abroad. I would like to thank Gillian Beer, Jackie Stacey, Paul Mendes-Flohr, Avital Ronell, Jeffrey Malpas, Richard Velkley, Michael O’Neil, Jonathan Long, Andrew Benjamin, Dimitris Vardoulakis, Howard Morphy, Reineir Munk, Jakob Johannes Köllhofer, Jakob Engholm Feldt, Berel Lang, Bernard Harcourt, Simon James and Mark Sandy for all their help, advice and support. Tim Clark of the English Department here in Durham has kindly authorized Avishek Parui to assist me with the index of Philosophy and Literature in Times of Crisis: Challenging Our Infatuation with Numbers. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and we apologize in advance for any unintentional omission. We would be pleased to insert the appropriate acknowledgement in any subsequent edition. “Daddy” (13), “Ariel” (6), “Tale of Tub” (10), “Three Women” (8), “Kindness” (3), “Burning the Letters” (8) from The Collected Letters of Sylvia Plath, Edited by Ted Hughes, Copyright 1960, 65, 71, 81 by the estate of Sylvia Plath Editorial mat’l Copyright (c) 1981 by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of HarperColllins Publishers. Introduction: Objects and Numbers – Our Current Infatuation It is a strange world David Lynch, Blue Velvet Life is a stranger in this world Franz Baermann Steiner All theories are fictions Gary Becker at the open seminar ‘American Neoliberalism and Michel Foucault’s Biopolititcs’, University of Chicago, 9 May 2012 Human rights and numbers: The contemporary fusion of the humanitarian with the techno-science of military calculation This work is a study in ethics, literature, economics and medicine. It investigates how we can better understand literature as a critique of what appears to be certain, predictable and non-ambiguous. Our infatuation with the supposed certainty of numbers has deleterious effects on various economic and medical practices. This is a broad-ranging study: its historical scope extends from the pre-modern to the modern and contemporary – from Augustine to Spinoza to Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath, P. Roth, E. L. Doctorow, E. Perlman, W. G. Sebald and J. Littell. Although it takes its points of reference from medieval (Augustine) and early modern thinkers (Spinoza and Shakespeare), its focus is on contemporary issues and concerns. Philosophy and Literature in Times of Crisis further develops the methodological innovation first outlined in the introduction to Spinoza and the Specters of Modernity: it practices a highly interdisciplinary version of intellectual history, which is productive of contemporary thought. Within
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