For years after its surgical removal, the literary theorist Roland Barthes retained a piece of hi... more For years after its surgical removal, the literary theorist Roland Barthes retained a piece of his own rib in a drawer alongside other items of sentimental value (e.g., an old set of keys, his student report card). The rib was removed from Barthes during a twelve-year bout of illness, during which he was frequently forced to spend time in hospitals and sanitoriums. According to Lana Lin, Barthes’ desire to hang onto the rib may have stemmed from a wish to maintain a feeling of wholeness, of bodily integrity. As she proposes in Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objects: Fractured Subjectivity in the Face of Cancer, serious illness can threaten or outright disrupt one’s sense of bodily integrity, exposing the subject to the ‘unwanted knowledge that from the outset we have never been entirely whole, a knowledge that most of us repress in order to function day to day’ (2). Informed by psychoanalysis and Melanie Klein’s concept of reparation, Lin’s focus in Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objectsis how subjects have responded to the destabilising effects of cancer. Her interest is in three individuals’ experience of the disease – psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, poet Audre Lorde and literary theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. The aim of Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objectsis to reflect on what objects and practices Freud, Lorde and Sedgwick used to sustain their sense of psychic unity.
The British Journal for the History of Science, 2016
The thirteen chapters that comprise Governing Risks in Modern Britain offer a historical gloss on... more The thirteen chapters that comprise Governing Risks in Modern Britain offer a historical gloss on a phenomenon by now familiar to our own age, in which everything from terrorism to the consumption of red meat has been identified as a threat to self or society. Editors Tom Crook and Mike Esbester suggest that the volume will offer some historical perspective to these contemporary problems. But Crook and Esbester have broader ambitions. Their hope is that the volume will contribute meaningfully to historiographical debate, encouraging a re-evaluation of the role of the modern British state, while also inciting greater appreciation of how governance not only includes acts by people on people, but also implicates an assemblage of technologies, objects, machines, substances and infrastructures. Such ambitions are realized, Crook and Esbester argue, in the volume's thirteen chapters, which are grouped around four broad themes.
In Enduring Time, Lisa Baraitser offers a generous and expansive rumination on experiences of tim... more In Enduring Time, Lisa Baraitser offers a generous and expansive rumination on experiences of time’s suspension – delaying, waiting, repeating, persisting – that attends to their potential capacity to offer conditions for political action. This is a thought-provoking and stirring engagement with living the elongated present, writes Ryan Ross, that will contribute to emergent debates on temporality across the humanities.
Stephen T. Casper and Delia Gavrus have two ambitions for their volume, The History of the Brain ... more Stephen T. Casper and Delia Gavrus have two ambitions for their volume, The History of the Brain and Mind Sciences: Technique, Technology, Therapy. The first is to offer a critical reflection on how the mind and brain sciences have been shaped over the past two centuries by various medical concepts, practices and objects. What is most curious about the volume, however, is its second aim, for Casper and Gavrus hope that The History of the Brain and Mind Sciences becomes a ‘sophisticated and versatile teaching tool for graduate and senior undergraduate seminars’ (p. 1). Yet such an ambition feels too modest – unusual, even – for a collection that contains such high-quality, original contributions.
In Public Inquiries: Wrong Route on Bloody Sunday, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC argues that for much ... more In Public Inquiries: Wrong Route on Bloody Sunday, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC argues that for much of the twentieth century public inquiries have been ill-focused and mishandled, with a particular focus on the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, chaired by Lord Saville. While the book’s insights are occasionally hampered by the recurrent emphasis placed on the individual influence of Lord Saville, it is impressive when advocating for a more focused role for public inquiries in contemporary Britain, finds Ryan Ross.
The increase in road traffic accidents in twentieth-century Britain brought with it a rise in the... more The increase in road traffic accidents in twentieth-century Britain brought with it a rise in the number of patients admitted to hospital with blunt, non-penetrating head injuries. Patients who had suffered mild to moderate trauma typically complained of a variety of problems, including headaches, dizziness and giddiness. For the neurologists tasked with diagnosing and treating these patients, such symptoms proved difficult to assess and liable to obscure the clinical picture. This article focuses on why neurologists turned to time as a diagnostic-tool in helping to resolve these issues, specifically the measurement of post-traumatic amnesia (PTA). This article argues that PTA became so central to neurological diagnosis owing to a set of epistemic, professional and material factors in the decades prior to the Second World War. It concludes with a call for deeper appreciation of the range of issues that contribute to the shaping of medical theories of head trauma.
This article focuses on the concept of ‘accident neurosis’, popularised by neurologist Henry Mill... more This article focuses on the concept of ‘accident neurosis’, popularised by neurologist Henry Miller in studies published in 1961. It aims to realise two goals. First, it introduces Miller’s concept of accident neurosis to the broader history of trauma—to a field, that is, more preoccupied with military traumata and clear-cut psychiatric aetiologies. Secondly, I use Miller’s studies, and the considerable legacy they created, to reflect on how historians of trauma construct historical narratives, asking whether there is sufficient appreciation of the ways in which events seem to leak into or retroactively animate one another.
My thesis has both a thematic and a conceptual focus. Thematically, it focusses on how the medica... more My thesis has both a thematic and a conceptual focus. Thematically, it focusses on how the medical profession framed the medico-legal sequelae of traumatic accidents in Britain, c. 1930 to 1990 – specifically, how doctors diagnosed, examined and conceptualised disorders like traumatic neurosis, post-concussional syndrome and whiplash. Drawing heavily upon court and hospital records, I develop three points – that doctors and lawyers held different, mutually exclusive approaches to understanding traumatic sequelae; that this produced a highly contorted, often contradictory, aetiological model of disorder; and that doctors had to expend a lot of energy in trying to reconcile these medico-legal tensions. My argument is that the medical profession had to undertake a significant amount of intellectual labour to gloss over what were various theories of time and causation. Through this, I move to my conceptual focus, to a larger debate about temporality and the writing of history. My contention is that historians remain too attached to linear historical narratives, that they often equate time with causation. As my thematic focus shows, linear time is not natural or taken-as-given but a product of socially-contingent factors. I conclude that academic history can only begin to experiment with new models of time and causation when historians begin to pivot away from established models of temporality.
For years after its surgical removal, the literary theorist Roland Barthes retained a piece of hi... more For years after its surgical removal, the literary theorist Roland Barthes retained a piece of his own rib in a drawer alongside other items of sentimental value (e.g., an old set of keys, his student report card). The rib was removed from Barthes during a twelve-year bout of illness, during which he was frequently forced to spend time in hospitals and sanitoriums. According to Lana Lin, Barthes’ desire to hang onto the rib may have stemmed from a wish to maintain a feeling of wholeness, of bodily integrity. As she proposes in Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objects: Fractured Subjectivity in the Face of Cancer, serious illness can threaten or outright disrupt one’s sense of bodily integrity, exposing the subject to the ‘unwanted knowledge that from the outset we have never been entirely whole, a knowledge that most of us repress in order to function day to day’ (2). Informed by psychoanalysis and Melanie Klein’s concept of reparation, Lin’s focus in Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objectsis how subjects have responded to the destabilising effects of cancer. Her interest is in three individuals’ experience of the disease – psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, poet Audre Lorde and literary theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. The aim of Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objectsis to reflect on what objects and practices Freud, Lorde and Sedgwick used to sustain their sense of psychic unity.
The British Journal for the History of Science, 2016
The thirteen chapters that comprise Governing Risks in Modern Britain offer a historical gloss on... more The thirteen chapters that comprise Governing Risks in Modern Britain offer a historical gloss on a phenomenon by now familiar to our own age, in which everything from terrorism to the consumption of red meat has been identified as a threat to self or society. Editors Tom Crook and Mike Esbester suggest that the volume will offer some historical perspective to these contemporary problems. But Crook and Esbester have broader ambitions. Their hope is that the volume will contribute meaningfully to historiographical debate, encouraging a re-evaluation of the role of the modern British state, while also inciting greater appreciation of how governance not only includes acts by people on people, but also implicates an assemblage of technologies, objects, machines, substances and infrastructures. Such ambitions are realized, Crook and Esbester argue, in the volume's thirteen chapters, which are grouped around four broad themes.
In Enduring Time, Lisa Baraitser offers a generous and expansive rumination on experiences of tim... more In Enduring Time, Lisa Baraitser offers a generous and expansive rumination on experiences of time’s suspension – delaying, waiting, repeating, persisting – that attends to their potential capacity to offer conditions for political action. This is a thought-provoking and stirring engagement with living the elongated present, writes Ryan Ross, that will contribute to emergent debates on temporality across the humanities.
Stephen T. Casper and Delia Gavrus have two ambitions for their volume, The History of the Brain ... more Stephen T. Casper and Delia Gavrus have two ambitions for their volume, The History of the Brain and Mind Sciences: Technique, Technology, Therapy. The first is to offer a critical reflection on how the mind and brain sciences have been shaped over the past two centuries by various medical concepts, practices and objects. What is most curious about the volume, however, is its second aim, for Casper and Gavrus hope that The History of the Brain and Mind Sciences becomes a ‘sophisticated and versatile teaching tool for graduate and senior undergraduate seminars’ (p. 1). Yet such an ambition feels too modest – unusual, even – for a collection that contains such high-quality, original contributions.
In Public Inquiries: Wrong Route on Bloody Sunday, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC argues that for much ... more In Public Inquiries: Wrong Route on Bloody Sunday, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC argues that for much of the twentieth century public inquiries have been ill-focused and mishandled, with a particular focus on the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, chaired by Lord Saville. While the book’s insights are occasionally hampered by the recurrent emphasis placed on the individual influence of Lord Saville, it is impressive when advocating for a more focused role for public inquiries in contemporary Britain, finds Ryan Ross.
The increase in road traffic accidents in twentieth-century Britain brought with it a rise in the... more The increase in road traffic accidents in twentieth-century Britain brought with it a rise in the number of patients admitted to hospital with blunt, non-penetrating head injuries. Patients who had suffered mild to moderate trauma typically complained of a variety of problems, including headaches, dizziness and giddiness. For the neurologists tasked with diagnosing and treating these patients, such symptoms proved difficult to assess and liable to obscure the clinical picture. This article focuses on why neurologists turned to time as a diagnostic-tool in helping to resolve these issues, specifically the measurement of post-traumatic amnesia (PTA). This article argues that PTA became so central to neurological diagnosis owing to a set of epistemic, professional and material factors in the decades prior to the Second World War. It concludes with a call for deeper appreciation of the range of issues that contribute to the shaping of medical theories of head trauma.
This article focuses on the concept of ‘accident neurosis’, popularised by neurologist Henry Mill... more This article focuses on the concept of ‘accident neurosis’, popularised by neurologist Henry Miller in studies published in 1961. It aims to realise two goals. First, it introduces Miller’s concept of accident neurosis to the broader history of trauma—to a field, that is, more preoccupied with military traumata and clear-cut psychiatric aetiologies. Secondly, I use Miller’s studies, and the considerable legacy they created, to reflect on how historians of trauma construct historical narratives, asking whether there is sufficient appreciation of the ways in which events seem to leak into or retroactively animate one another.
My thesis has both a thematic and a conceptual focus. Thematically, it focusses on how the medica... more My thesis has both a thematic and a conceptual focus. Thematically, it focusses on how the medical profession framed the medico-legal sequelae of traumatic accidents in Britain, c. 1930 to 1990 – specifically, how doctors diagnosed, examined and conceptualised disorders like traumatic neurosis, post-concussional syndrome and whiplash. Drawing heavily upon court and hospital records, I develop three points – that doctors and lawyers held different, mutually exclusive approaches to understanding traumatic sequelae; that this produced a highly contorted, often contradictory, aetiological model of disorder; and that doctors had to expend a lot of energy in trying to reconcile these medico-legal tensions. My argument is that the medical profession had to undertake a significant amount of intellectual labour to gloss over what were various theories of time and causation. Through this, I move to my conceptual focus, to a larger debate about temporality and the writing of history. My contention is that historians remain too attached to linear historical narratives, that they often equate time with causation. As my thematic focus shows, linear time is not natural or taken-as-given but a product of socially-contingent factors. I conclude that academic history can only begin to experiment with new models of time and causation when historians begin to pivot away from established models of temporality.
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