Systems of Life: Biopolitics, Economics, and Literature on the Cusp of Modernity

'Systems of Life' offers a wide-ranging revaluation of the emergence of biopolitics in Europe from the mid-18th to the mid-19th century. In staging an encounter among literature, political economy, and the still emergent sciences of life in that historical moment, the essays collected here reopen the question of how concepts of animal, vegetable, and human life, among other biological registers, had an impact on the Enlightenment project of thinking politics and economics as a joint enterprise. The volume's contributors consider politics, economics, and the biological as distinct, semi-autonomous spheres whose various combinations required inventive, sometimes incomplete, acts of conceptual mediation, philosophical negotiation, disciplinary intervention, or aesthetic representation

'Systems of Life' offers a wide-ranging revaluation of the emergence of biopolitics in Europe from the mid-18th to the mid-19th century. In staging an encounter among literature, political economy, and the still emergent sciences of life in that historical moment, the essays collected here reopen the question of how concepts of animal, vegetable, and human life, among other biological registers, had an impact on the Enlightenment project of thinking politics and economics as a joint enterprise. The volume's contributors consider politics, economics, and the biological as distinct, semi-autonomous spheres whose various combinations required inventive, sometimes incomplete, acts of conceptual mediation, philosophical negotiation, disciplinary intervention, or aesthetic representation

Introduction : systems of life, or bioeconomic politics / Richard A. Barney and Warren Montag -- Looking for (economic) growth in the eighteenth century / Christian Marouby -- An African diasporic critique of violence / James Edward Ford III -- Rousseau : vital instinct and pity / Pierre Macherey -- System and subject in Adam Smith's political economy : nature, vitalism, and bioeconomic life / Catherine Packham -- Vitalism's revolution : John Thelwall, life, and the economy of radical politics / Richard A. Barney -- Writing generation : revolutionary bodies and the poetics of political economy / Annika Mann -- William Blake and the time of ontogeny / Amanda Jo Goldstein -- Concerning hunger : empire aesthetics in the present moment / Mrinalini Chakravorty -- The hero takes a fall : gravity, comedy, and Darwin's entangled bank / Timothy C. Campbell

Cover -- Systems of Life -- Title -- Copyright -- CONTENTS -- Introduction: Systems of Life, or Bioeconomic Politics -- 1. Looking for (Economic) Growth in the Eighteenth Century -- 2. An African Diasporic Critique of Violence -- 3. Rousseau: Vital Instinct and Pity -- 4. System and Subject in Adam Smith's Political Economy: Nature, Vitalism, and Bioeconomic Life -- 5. Vitalism's Revolution: John Thelwall, Life, and the Economy of Radical Politics -- 6. Writing Generation: Revolutionary Bodies and the Poetics of Political Economy -- 7. William Blake and the Time of Ontogeny -- 8. Concerning Hunger: Empire Aesthetics in the Present Moment -- 9. The Hero Takes a Fall: Gravity, Comedy, and Darwin's Entangled Bank -- Acknowledgments -- List of Contributors -- Index