![]() ![]() )) not demand thick description and invite ethical critique? In sum, Smith’s deep readings successfully portray what he sets out to show: the neural turn, one might call it, where nerves are seen as intrinsically theatrical and quintessentially modern. Did we really come to think of ourselves (exclusively) as nerves? If so, would the resulting aboulia, loss of agency, and individual unaccountability (‘no one’s fault’ (p. Further, Wedekind has been studied as sexologist, while parallels have been drawn between quantum physics, not neuroscience, and Hofmannsthal. Rather than nerves, hormones and dreams determine these modern theatrical cases at the precise time of Smith’s chosen period. Woyzeck premiered only during the rise of Expressionism, and in the light of the dominance of Strindberg in his study, one wonders about Smith’s failure to acknowledge Wedekind’s proto-Expressionistic, taboo-ridden Spring Awakening with its depiction of psychic instability and sexual curiosity or fin-de-siècle Hofmannsthal ’s Fool and Death, where gesture plays the lead and the influence of Freud’s quasi-contemporary Ernst Mach’s ideas on the vanishing subject could not be more noticeable or the importance of Young Vienna altogether. Contemporaneous alternatives to the neural approach are likewise elided, for example with Smith’s universalized claim emerging from his nonetheless ingenious reading of Büchner’s Woyzeck through the medical lens. It seems problematic, however, that crucial precursors remain unaddressed in what sets out to be a genealogy. Smith indubitably excels in launching his major idea, the rise of the neural subject, by mounting a persuasive argument based on thorough close readings of an eclectic series of international works. ![]() MLR, ., the liing of taboos, and creative reinventions of genre. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: ![]()
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