Science and Technology in the Age of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, and James: Thinking and Writing Electricity

254 Pages·2007·1.619 MB·English

by  Sam Halliday (auth.)

Science and Technology
in the Age of Hawthorne,
Melville,Twain,and James
American Literature Readings in the 21st Century
Series Editor: Linda Wagner-Martin
American Literature Readings in the 21st Century publishes works by contempo-
rary critics that help shape critical opinion regarding literature of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries in the United States.
Published by Palgrave Macmillan
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Women and Race in Contemporary U.S. Writing: From Faulkner to Morrison
By Kelly Lynch Reames
Science and Technology in the Age of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, and James:
Thinking and Writing Electricity
By Sam Halliday
Science and Technology
in the Age of Hawthorne,
Melville,Twain, and James
Thinking and Writing Electricity
Sam Halliday
SCIENCEANDTECHNOLOGYINTHEAGEOFHAWTHORNE,MELVILLE,TWAIN,ANDJAMES
© Sam Halliday,2007.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-4039-7672-7
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2007 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
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Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-53732-7 ISBN 978-0-230-60509-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230605091
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Halliday,Sam.
Science and technology in the age of Hawthorne,Melville,Twain,and
James :thinking and writing electricity / Sam Halliday.
p.cm.
Includes index.
1.Science—United States—History––19th century.
2.Technology––United States––History––19th century.
3.Electricity––United States––History––19th century.4.Literature
and science––United States––History––19th century.I.Title.
Q127.U6H265 2007
509.73(cid:2)09034––dc22 2007061160
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India.
First edition:June 2007
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my parents, Tim and Carolyn
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Permissions
I would like to thank L’Harmattan for permission to republish portions
of my essay, “George Beard, Electricity, and the Nervous Body in the
Nineteenth-Century,” first published in Homo Orthopedicus: Le corps
et ses prosthèses à l’époque (post)moderniste, ed. Nathalie Roelens and
Wanda Strauven (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), 76–86, and Oxford
University Press for permission to republish portions of my article,
“Deceit, Desire and Technology: A Media History of Secrets and
Lies,” first published in Forum for Modern Language Studies, 37: 2
(2001), 141–54.
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Contents
List of Illustrations xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
Thinking and Writing Electricity 1
Vitality, Sociality, and the Idea of Ideas 3
The Sources of Electrical Thought: Science
and Technology 6
The Dialectic of Old and New; The Organization
of the Book 10
1 Time and Space 17
Introduction 17
“Annihilating” Time and Space 20
Railroads, Time, and the Logistical Sublime 24
Intimacy, Love, and Simultaneity 30
Powers of Mind 34
Ghosts of Electricity 39
Electro-Historicism: Henry Adams 44
Powers of Tradition 50
Coda: Inventing the “Medium” 56
2 Individual Difference and Self-Representation 59
Introduction 59
“Training,” Telegraphy, and Time 60
“The Physiology and Psychology of
the Telegraphic Language” 65
Difference, Intersubjectivity, and Meaning 68
Habits, Speed, and Automatism 72
“Training,” and the Medium 76
“Resembling Oneself,” and Portrait Painting 77
“In-One-Another” and “After-Each-Other”:
Bodies and Machines 81
Misrepresentation and the Voice 85
Distance, Sound, and Sense 90