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BODIES OF GLASS:

A CULTURAL AND LITERARY HISTORY OF TRANSPARENT HUMANS by

Elena Fabietti

A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Baltimore,

Maryland

June 2017

ii

Abstract

My dissertation presents a cultural historical analysis of the transpare nt human as a figure in European literature and culture from early modernity to the 20th cent ury. Exploring the ways in which humans are repre sented as transparent throughout European cultural history, I investigate the distinct notions of the human disclosed by ea ch historical constellation. Spanning literary, medical, visual, and political sources , my research assembles the composite cultural plot that yields such phenomena as the melancholic glass humans of early modernity, the trope of the transparent heart in E nlightenment literature, the Faustian restaging of the alchemic fantasy of an artific ial human replica, the visual rhetoric of glass anatomic models displayed in German hygiene exhibitions during the 1930s. In my dissertation I argue that the appearance of the figure of a transp arent human on the stage of cultural history always signals and performs a crucial n egotiation between competi ng notions of the human. The stakes of this negotiation are the boundari es between the individual and the community, the categories of normality an d pathology, of power and impotence, of purity and contamination. The way a transparent human represents and arbitrates these conflicts is different in each case. The transformative metamorphic imagination of a body that abolishes flesh for a transparent material such as glass plays out as a fantasy of transcending the human, sometimes overco ming its mortality, sometimes enhancing its fragility. The dissertation is articulated in four chronologically organized chapte rs: 1. Breakable Bodies: Early Modern Humans of Glass in Cervantes's "El Licenciado iii

Vidriera";

2. A Transparent Heart: Mechanics and Poetics in Laurence Sterne and Jean-

Jacques Rousseau;

3. A Human in a Glass Bottle: Goethe's Homunculus a

nd Romantic

Embodiment; 4. 20th

Century Transparent Bodies: From Social Hygiene to Nazi

Propaganda.

The historical placement of each figure within the cultural coordinates and discourses that have contributed to its emergence yields an account of t his figure along the unfolding of a narration that, without being teleological, tells the story of how humans have fantasized, imagined, constructed, and reinvented their bodies. Readers: Dr. Hent de Vries, Dr. Leonardo Lisi, Dr.

Drew Daniel, Dr. Evelyne Ender

, Dr.

Jacques Neefs.

iv

Acknowledgements

I am deeply thankful to my advisors, Leonardo Lisi and Hent de Vries, wh o supported this work from its first tentative steps to its present shape, with thei r kindness, trust, and guidance. Leonardo Lisi followed my writing with the greatest care, pati ence, and attention, always pushing me to sharpen my questions and arguments, and always making himself available to discuss and engage in fruitful conversations on the stakes and meaning of my work. Hent de Vries has always been there to listen, patie ntly and attentively, to my doubts and dilemmas. With his wisdom and insights, he has helped me to productively organize my thinking not just about this work, but about any topic I have encountered in the course of my intellectual path of my graduate study.

The Hu

manities Center, with its unique academic freedom and generosity, made i t possible for me to pursue my research in a greatly supportive and open e nvironment. Each member of the faculty of the center has, at different moments and i n different ways, engaged with my project with comments, feedback, and advice. I want to thank Mic hael Fried for the inspiration to pursue original questions with the greatest rigor, Ruth Leys for the magnanimous welcome she offered me in the American university when I was still tr ying to find my place there, Paola Marrati for the philosophical sparkle she lit in me during her deeply formative seminars, Anne Eakin Moss for being the kind est mentor, and Yi Ping Ong for showing me how to render one's research interests productive in t he classroom space. The first idea for this research took shape in 2013 in Berlin, when I wa s guest of the Zentrum für Literatur und Kulturforschung (ZfL), thanks to the hospitality of Sigrid v Weigel. In the course of a graduate workshop and subsequent conversations with her, I was able, thanks to her rigorous guidance, to hone and consolidate my qu estions for this dissertation. Again at the ZfL, in 2015, I was invited to present a part of my research at the conference

Glas. Materielle Kultur zwischen zeige

n und verbergen , engaging in a very productive exchange with several scholars, in particular Margarete Simon Werret. My contribution is going to be published soon in Berlin in a collected volume of essays (Fabietti 2017). In 2015, at the ACLA in Seattle, I presented part of my work at the panel

Transparency

, organized by Jeffrey di Leo and Zahi Zalloua, whom I want to thank for their hospitality and the discussion that led to an ar ticle I wrote for the journal

Symplok

(Fabietti 2015).

I am in

debted to Stefanos Geroulanos for an enlightening and productive afternoon of exchange on the topic of transparency, and to Simone Marche si for his many stories and for his advice. I am thankful to Bernadette Wegenstein, the director of the Center for A dvanced Media Studies at JHU, for the support she gave me through a generous fel lowship that made it possible for me to complete this manuscript. For kindly reading parts, extracts, or drafts of my work at different st ages, or for giving me ideas, or l inguistic and intellectual feedback,

I am thankful to Katie Boyce

Jacino, Alice Christensen, Tarek Dika,

David Gutherz,

Hannah Hunter

Parker,

Omid

Mehrgan,

Fabrizio Ortolano,

Massimo Petrozzi, Denise Reimann, Avraham Rot,

Daniel

Schwa r tz,

Benjamin Stein,

a nd Stephan Willer. I want to thank Michael McCreary for patiently proofreading my manuscrip t. vi Avraham and Aviva Rot have been incredibly gracious and supportive frien ds, with whom I shared exciting discussions about my work as well as funny a nd beautiful moments of my American life. For the incessant and ongoing conversations, discussions, and readings, I am always thankful to Frederic Ponten, my partner and ally in life. Our son

Jonas, with his

overwhelming joy for life, has made every little struggle with my work a lighter enterprise. My family in Italy has encouraged me to go through many challenges and d oubts with their unremitting love and trust. To my father, who won't be able to read this work, but who believed in it from the beginning, and to his i nspiring example, as a scholar and as a human, in loving memory, this research is dedicated. vii

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