Introduction

This introductory chapter sets out the book’s argument that nineteenth-century prosthesis narratives, though presented in a predominantly ableist and sometimes disablist manner, challenge the dominance of physical completeness as they question the logic of prostheticization or present non-normative subjects in threateningly powerful ways. The chapter positions this argument in relation to various scholarly fields, including disability studies, Victorian studies, the history of science and technology, and literature and science. It addresses several methodological questions, including those pertaining to the prosthetic devices, historical period, and specific sources selected for investigation. In responding to these questions, the chapter provides potted histories of the technological developments of nineteenth-century artificial limbs, eyes, teeth, and hair. It also explains the author’s decision to use terms such as wholeness and incompleteness.

After Electromagnetism

The topic of this chapter is a quickening in the pace of change, in both technology and literature, brought about from the 1880s onwards by the harnessing of electricity’s alliance with magnetism to transform methods of telecommunication. The consequent opening up of the ‘Olympian frequency domain’ (Friedrich Kittler) fundamentally undermined the sovereignty of human consciousness. The chapter explores two uses of the metaphor of lightning in literature, philosophy, anthropology, and folklore: first, to mark the limit of unaided human perception; secondly, to indicate, by an emphasis on the return stroke, that two-way communication between earth and heaven is at least conceivable. The focus is on D. H. Lawrence’s fiction, essays, and poetry (especially the extraordinary ‘Bare Almond Trees’); and on Hope Mirrlees’s encoding of her relationship with the eminent classicist Jane Harrison into Paris (1920), a modernist long poem worthy of comparison with T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922).

Information Sciences in the Schedules of Library Bibliographic Classification

Library bibliographic classification (LBC) is the national classification system of Russia. The article briefly covers the history of the LBC and presents the structure and content of new sections of the LBC schedules, reflecting the modern literature on information science, information technology and cybernetics. The author considers specific features of delimitation of literature within the sections and between other divisions of the LBC medium schedules. Cybernetics section gives the most general and modern definition of cybernetics as the science of systems organization and control. The article studies the principles of literature delimitation between cybernetics, social and economic sciences. The author determines the main place for general literature on mathematical modelling and other methods of process control simulation. The article considers the principles of delimitation from the literature using mathematical modelling as a research method. The author presents the control system as a complex of interrelated and interdependent elements that form an ordered integrity and unity. In the construction of “Informatics and information technology” section the priority is given to the literature for users. The author analyses the principles of delimitation between informatics, mathematics, technology and scientific-information activity. The sources on preparation of text and graphic documents, technical and accounting documentation are considered as information technology, and literature on study and use of computer programs for these purposes is collected in the relevant divisions on computer technology. The article studies the principles of delimitation of literature on information processes in computer networks, network equipment, etc. The author determines the main place for the literature on Internet technologies and analyses the principles of delimitation from the literature on information search as scientific-information activity, creation and programming of web sites. There is fixed the place for literature on information systems and databases, the main areas of research in the field of artificial intelligence, virtual reality and virtualization technology. “Information security” completes the section. Delimitation is carried out with the legal basis of information security and engineering protection of information. New sections of the LBC schedules have improved the classification of literature and made it more convenient to search the catalogues.