{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/98252"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/98252","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Signifying nothing: intelligence and intellectual disability in modern British literature and culture, 1919 – 1969","abstract":"Signifying Nothing: Intelligence and Intellectual Disability in Modern British Literature and Culture, 1919-1969 investigates the confluences between literary and scientific approaches to intelligence in the mid-twentieth century. It stages two central arguments. First, it argues that in multiple domains, intelligence was constituted as a biopolitical resource that required management and care. As a biopolitical resource, intelligence became a criterion through which subjects could make claims to belonging in the decades of sociopolitical upheaval before, during, and after the Second World War in Britain. Second, this project argues that a significant body of midcentury literature models how competing theories of intelligence, if they were accorded cultural authority, could affect imagined communities. Examining literary works by H.D., Rebecca West, Olive Moore, H.G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Peter Nichols, I show that scientific and political concerns about intelligence and intellectual disability animated literary approaches to the relationships among subject, society, and state in the midcentury. The chapters of this project examine how literary authors circulate contemporaneous understandings of intelligence and its inverse, intellectual disability, to envision and critique collectivities at the levels of identity, species, and—most centrally—nation. In doing so, these texts test and contest intelligence as a measure of the human for the purposes of defining a community. These chapters trace how mid-twentieth century works of literature established intelligence as a distinct, transpersonal essence with biopolitical meaning (Chapter 1: Interwar Imaginings of Collective Intelligence); explored how ideas about intellectual disability could challenge contemporaneous approaches to narrative and language (Chapter 2: “Contemplating the idiot”: Mental Privacy, Intellectual Disability, and the Possibility of Private Language in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts); revalued the culturally maligned experience of ignorance (Chapter 3: Information, Ignorance, and Ways of Reading Samuel Beckett); and employed questions of intelligence to assess the welfare state’s potentially conflicting promises of care and efficiency (Chapter 4: Cognitive Citizenship and the Welfare State in Harold Pinter and Peter Nichols). As a whole, this project shows that midcentury literature robustly engages in multidisciplinary debates about the nature and meaning of intelligence.","abstract_html":"Signifying Nothing: Intelligence and Intellectual Disability in Modern British Literature and Culture, 1919-1969 investigates the confluences between literary and scientific approaches to intelligence in the mid-twentieth century. It stages two central arguments. First, it argues that in multiple domains, intelligence was constituted as a biopolitical resource that required management and care. As a biopolitical resource, intelligence became a criterion through which subjects could make claims to belonging in the decades of sociopolitical upheaval before, during, and after the Second World War in Britain. Second, this project argues that a significant body of midcentury literature models how competing theories of intelligence, if they were accorded cultural authority, could affect imagined communities. Examining literary works by H.D., Rebecca West, Olive Moore, H.G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Peter Nichols, I show that scientific and political concerns about intelligence and intellectual disability animated literary approaches to the relationships among subject, society, and state in the midcentury. The chapters of this project examine how literary authors circulate contemporaneous understandings of intelligence and its inverse, intellectual disability, to envision and critique collectivities at the levels of identity, species, and—most centrally—nation. In doing so, these texts test and contest intelligence as a measure of the human for the purposes of defining a community. These chapters trace how mid-twentieth century works of literature established intelligence as a distinct, transpersonal essence with biopolitical meaning (Chapter 1: Interwar Imaginings of Collective Intelligence); explored how ideas about intellectual disability could challenge contemporaneous approaches to narrative and language (Chapter 2: “Contemplating the idiot”: Mental Privacy, Intellectual Disability, and the Possibility of Private Language in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts); revalued the culturally maligned experience of ignorance (Chapter 3: Information, Ignorance, and Ways of Reading Samuel Beckett); and employed questions of intelligence to assess the welfare state’s potentially conflicting promises of care and efficiency (Chapter 4: Cognitive Citizenship and the Welfare State in Harold Pinter and Peter Nichols). As a whole, this project shows that midcentury literature robustly engages in multidisciplinary debates about the nature and meaning of intelligence.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Pulsifer, Rebecah Jo"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"English","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Gaedtke, Andrew","Mahaffey, Vicki","Frost, Samantha","Littlefield, Melissa","Linett, Maren"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2017,"date_issued":"2017-09-29T16:39:19Z","date_published":"2017-09-29T16:39:19Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:35Z","subjects":["Modernism","Mind","Intelligence","Disability"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["Copyright 2017 Rebecah Pulsifer"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/98252","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Gaedtke, Andrew","Mahaffey, Vicki","Frost, Samantha","Littlefield, Melissa","Linett, Maren"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Pulsifer, Rebecah Jo"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2017-09-29T16:39:19Z","2019-09-30T09:15:20Z","2017-07-06","2017-08"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["English"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Modernism","Mind","Intelligence","Disability"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2017 Rebecah Pulsifer"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/98252"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Signifying Nothing: Intelligence and Intellectual Disability in Modern British Literature and Culture, 1919-1969 investigates the confluences between literary and scientific approaches to intelligence in the mid-twentieth century. It stages two central arguments. First, it argues that in multiple domains, intelligence was constituted as a biopolitical resource that required management and care. As a biopolitical resource, intelligence became a criterion through which subjects could make claims to belonging in the decades of sociopolitical upheaval before, during, and after the Second World War in Britain. Second, this project argues that a significant body of midcentury literature models how competing theories of intelligence, if they were accorded cultural authority, could affect imagined communities. Examining literary works by H.D., Rebecca West, Olive Moore, H.G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Peter Nichols, I show that scientific and political concerns about intelligence and intellectual disability animated literary approaches to the relationships among subject, society, and state in the midcentury. The chapters of this project examine how literary authors circulate contemporaneous understandings of intelligence and its inverse, intellectual disability, to envision and critique collectivities at the levels of identity, species, and—most centrally—nation. In doing so, these texts test and contest intelligence as a measure of the human for the purposes of defining a community. These chapters trace how mid-twentieth century works of literature established intelligence as a distinct, transpersonal essence with biopolitical meaning (Chapter 1: Interwar Imaginings of Collective Intelligence); explored how ideas about intellectual disability could challenge contemporaneous approaches to narrative and language (Chapter 2: “Contemplating the idiot”: Mental Privacy, Intellectual Disability, and the Possibility of Private Language in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts); revalued the culturally maligned experience of ignorance (Chapter 3: Information, Ignorance, and Ways of Reading Samuel Beckett); and employed questions of intelligence to assess the welfare state’s potentially conflicting promises of care and efficiency (Chapter 4: Cognitive Citizenship and the Welfare State in Harold Pinter and Peter Nichols). As a whole, this project shows that midcentury literature robustly engages in multidisciplinary debates about the nature and meaning of intelligence.","Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2019-08-01","The student, Rebecah Pulsifer, accepted the attached license on 2017-07-06 at 09:21.","The student, Rebecah Pulsifer, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2017-07-06 at 09:29.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2017-07-06 at 11:41.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #11325 on 2017-09-29 at 11:14:31","Made available in DSpace on 2017-09-29T16:39:19Z (GMT). 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It stages two central arguments. First, it argues that in multiple domains, intelligence was constituted as a biopolitical resource that required management and care. As a biopolitical resource, intelligence became a criterion through which subjects could make claims to belonging in the decades of sociopolitical upheaval before, during, and after the Second World War in Britain. Second, this project argues that a significant body of midcentury literature models how competing theories of intelligence, if they were accorded cultural authority, could affect imagined communities. Examining literary works by H.D., Rebecca West, Olive Moore, H.G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Peter Nichols, I show that scientific and political concerns about intelligence and intellectual disability animated literary approaches to the relationships among subject, society, and state in the midcentury. The chapters of this project examine how literary authors circulate contemporaneous understandings of intelligence and its inverse, intellectual disability, to envision and critique collectivities at the levels of identity, species, and—most centrally—nation. In doing so, these texts test and contest intelligence as a measure of the human for the purposes of defining a community. These chapters trace how mid-twentieth century works of literature established intelligence as a distinct, transpersonal essence with biopolitical meaning (Chapter 1: Interwar Imaginings of Collective Intelligence); explored how ideas about intellectual disability could challenge contemporaneous approaches to narrative and language (Chapter 2: “Contemplating the idiot”: Mental Privacy, Intellectual Disability, and the Possibility of Private Language in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts); revalued the culturally maligned experience of ignorance (Chapter 3: Information, Ignorance, and Ways of Reading Samuel Beckett); and employed questions of intelligence to assess the welfare state’s potentially conflicting promises of care and efficiency (Chapter 4: Cognitive Citizenship and the Welfare State in Harold Pinter and Peter Nichols). As a whole, this project shows that midcentury literature robustly engages in multidisciplinary debates about the nature and meaning of intelligence.","Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2019-08-01","The student, Rebecah Pulsifer, accepted the attached license on 2017-07-06 at 09:21.","The student, Rebecah Pulsifer, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2017-07-06 at 09:29.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2017-07-06 at 11:41.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #11325 on 2017-09-29 at 11:14:31","Made available in DSpace on 2017-09-29T16:39:19Z (GMT). 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