ABSTRACT

In this introduction to the special issue Victorian Materialisms, the authors review the material turn in cultural and literary studies, foregrounding the necessity of more historical nuance. While new materialist accounts tend to stress the post-Enlightenment persistence of dualistic oppositions between nature and culture, humans and nonhumans, body and mind, the editors of this special issue argue that Victorian conceptions of matter reveal a wide range of materialisms that anticipate current new materialist interventions. Closer attention to nineteenth-century cultural, literary, philosophical, and scientific approaches to matter, the authors submit, uncovers not just anxiety about boundary breaches, but a widespread interest in material agency and the entanglement of animal, chemical, human, plant, and inorganic matter. The introduction suggests that a broader enquiry into Victorian materialisms beyond canonical figures and texts helps recuperate the pervasiveness and mundaneness of Victorian engagements with matter and material agency.

摘要

在本期特刊的介绍中维多利亚唯物主义，作者回顾了文化和文学研究的物质转向，强调了更多历史细微差别的必要性。虽然新的唯物主义叙述倾向于强调自然与文化、人类与非人类、身体与心灵之间二元对立的后启蒙运动持续存在，但本期特刊的编辑们认为，维多利亚时代的物质概念揭示了广泛的唯物主义，这些唯物主义预示着当前的新唯物主义干预。作者认为，更密切地关注 19 世纪的文化、文学、哲学和科学处理物质的方法，不仅揭示了对边界突破的焦虑，而且揭示了对物质代理和动物、化学、人类、植物和无机物。