A.S. Byatt, Science, and the Mind/Body Dilemma

What is it about?

This article combines an illustrated overview of Byatt’s fictional appropriation of science with a survey of her essays and pieces on neurophysiology and her reflections on her own thought processes to demonstrate the significance of science in her writing praxis. While Byatt is regularly criticized by reviewers for her overambitious intellectuality, this article proposes instead to consider her scientific erudition as the matrix of her writing process which deliberates the conflict between body and mind. Through scientific taxonomy, Byatt endeavours to circumscribe the abject dimension of the body whose representational gap she transcends by means of a libidinal investment of scientific words, thus problematizing her own status as a female writer.

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