Rewriting the Mechanic: Text, Technology, and the Body in the Eighteenth Century

Description:

Rewriting the Mechanic examines how written descriptions, circulating across genres in eighteenth-century Britain, transformed certain mechanical arts by imagining them as newly innovative, authoritative, and able to make speculative possibilities real--as what we now call technological.

Review Quotes:

"Emily West's masterful Rewriting the Mechanic is sure to have significant scholarly impact as it recalibrates our understanding of the important role speculative literary techniques played in the making of modernity. West encourages an invigorated appreciation for how Enlightenment-era literary representations do not simply respond to technological innovations but frequently, and more importantly, help produce the very possibility of such innovations. Analyzing a broad and diverse collection of eighteenth-century British texts, Rewriting the Mechanic shows how literary methods helped not only establish but also naturalize fundamentally artificial conceptions of ability and authority, which were closely associated with claims to mechanical superiority. The story West tells is illuminating and offers new ways of understanding the British Enlightenment and its enduring legacy."