Microscopic Life in Early-Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Literature and Performance #1014537

This volume provides a groundbreaking interdisciplinary collection exploring how literature and performance engage with life at microscopic scales. Responding to an era dominated by planetary thinking, the volume turns attention to the invisible biological dimensions that shape our imagination of life, community, and ecology. Drawing from North American and European case studies, the volume’s essays and creative works examine how fiction, poetry, theatre, dance, installation art and museum practices render microbial and cellular processes perceptible, to enable new ethical and political relationships across species and scales.
The volume’s originality lies in its comparative approach to performance, artistic practice, and literature, as well as in the parallels it explores between the early twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Integrating biopolitical philosophy, new materialism, and post-humanist theory, Microscopic Life examines innovative concepts such as microbiopolitics, probiotic ethics, multispecies community, and metabolic welcoming.
'Microscopic Life' will appeal to scholars and students of literature, performance studies, and the medical and environmental humanities, as well as artists, curators, and practitioners interested in the intersections between science, art, and ecology. It offers an inspiring resource for readers curious about how creative practices can reimagine life at its smallest—and most vital—scales.