{"title":"Man as Memory and Metaphor of Matter: Italo Calvino’s ‘Priscilla’ and the Narration of (Bio)science","authors":"E. Baldi","doi":"10.1080/00751634.2023.2221057","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article investigates the relation between science and narration through the lens of gender and anthropocentrism. By analysing Calvino’s long, ‘biocomic’ triptych ‘Priscilla’ (published in T con zero in 1967) alongside (popular) scientific tales on (a)sexual reproduction, patterns in fictional and scientific storytelling are individuated. The three parts of Calvino’s story, starting from a unicellular organism and ending in the (primordial) sea, tell a remarkably non-anthropocentric tale. Different life forms and sexualities are explored alongside the microbiology of human reproduction. The binary terms and gendered hierarchies through which the meeting of egg and sperm is often recounted in scientific narratives are much less pronounced in ‘Priscilla’. By exploring the posthuman and non-speciesist aspects of Calvino’s story, the entanglement between past and future, pre-human and post-human, human and animal, can be reappraised in an original manner.","PeriodicalId":44221,"journal":{"name":"Italian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Italian Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00751634.2023.2221057","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT This article investigates the relation between science and narration through the lens of gender and anthropocentrism. By analysing Calvino’s long, ‘biocomic’ triptych ‘Priscilla’ (published in T con zero in 1967) alongside (popular) scientific tales on (a)sexual reproduction, patterns in fictional and scientific storytelling are individuated. The three parts of Calvino’s story, starting from a unicellular organism and ending in the (primordial) sea, tell a remarkably non-anthropocentric tale. Different life forms and sexualities are explored alongside the microbiology of human reproduction. The binary terms and gendered hierarchies through which the meeting of egg and sperm is often recounted in scientific narratives are much less pronounced in ‘Priscilla’. By exploring the posthuman and non-speciesist aspects of Calvino’s story, the entanglement between past and future, pre-human and post-human, human and animal, can be reappraised in an original manner.
本文从性别和人类中心主义的角度考察科学与叙事的关系。通过分析卡尔维诺的长篇“生物喜剧”三联画《普丽西拉》(1967年出版于《T con zero》)和(流行的)关于有性生殖的科学故事，小说和科学故事的模式都是个性化的。卡尔维诺的故事分为三个部分，从单细胞生物开始，到(原始)海洋结束，讲述了一个非常不以人类为中心的故事。不同的生命形式和性与人类生殖微生物一起探索。在科学叙事中，卵子和精子的相遇常常通过二元术语和性别等级来叙述，而在《普莉希拉》中却不那么明显。通过探索卡尔维诺故事的后人类和非物种方面，可以以一种新颖的方式重新评估过去与未来、前人类与后人类、人与动物之间的纠缠。
期刊介绍：
Italian Studies has a national and international reputation for academic and scholarly excellence, publishing original articles (in Italian or English) on a wide range of Italian cultural concerns from the Middle Ages to the contemporary era. The journal warmly welcomes submissions covering a range of disciplines and inter-disciplinary subjects from scholarly and critical work on Italy"s literary culture and linguistics to Italian history and politics, film and art history, and gender and cultural studies. It publishes two issues per year, normally including one special themed issue and occasional interviews with leading scholars.The reviews section in the journal includes articles and short reviews on a broad spectrum of recent works of scholarship.
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