Reviews for Development in infancy

The average rating for Development in infancy based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-12-10 00:00:00 John Reske Foucauldian approach (among the first, along with Armstrong at about the same time). Miller argues that the 19c novel is obsessed with policing even as it/or especially because it marginalizes and displaces the actual police to depict a system of social norms that function to police middle class society independently of an actively punishing institution. The liberal subject learns to discipline herself--resulting in the same outcome that could have been achieved by other means. Moonstone = the police detectives ultimately fail, the novel solves the mystery according to the values it has set out all along. Bleak House = Chancery everywhere, not about interpretation but the flouting of interpretation/ we never know the actual question behind the case. Woman in White = the male reader is effeminized through the (feminine) nervousness of the sensation novel. Reading the novel teaches us to expect privacy, autonomy for a secret self that can read others (characters) without their reading us, but this secret is only constituted by being an open secret--in order for there to be a valuable secret self, the self has to let others know that there's an interiority that they are denied access to. And, of course, the reader surveys characters as they oversee, read, and determine other characters. [Again, Miller repeatedly implies, as many others have done, that we can fully know characters...but character depth is created through the illusion of a fictional archive--in other words, that there is always more to know, specify and even though characters are technically delimited by their representation, the idea that they could potentially be further specifies always works to undermine their total definition. Therefore characters are allowed 'secrets' much like our own]

Review # 2 was written on 2015-01-11 00:00:00 David Scott A fascinating take on the presence (and occasionally the meaningful absence) of the police in Victorian novels, this book argues that our thinking, actions, and even identity are all controlled by external forces that either police us with the forces of the law and the state or get us to police ourselves with the forces of norms, respectability, and self-control. Miller takes for granted that his reader has at least a passing familiarity with the novels he analyzes, which means the chapters on novels I have read (Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, The Woman in White) were significantly easier to follow than the chapters on novels I haven't read (The Moonstone, Bleak House, Barchester Towers). Miller's explicit engagement with other scholars is almost entirely relegated to footnotes, which makes the body of his text seem ostensibly less academic, when in actuality it is highly academic but with references that are often apparent only to those who are already in the know. The best parts of the book are when Miller expands from thinking about the policing happening within the novels the policing happening between the novel and the reader. Novels train readers to look for and look up to the police, but novels also train readers to police themselves. Our own reading habits become as much a police force as the officers of the state.