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Becoming American: evolution and performance in Edith Wharton's the Custom of the Country.(Critical essay)

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From: Intertexts
Date: 20050322
Author:Bruni, John

American cellular biologist Lynn Margulis and science journalist Dorion Sagan's view of life processes is underlined by their comment in What is Life?, "Life on Earth is more like a verb. It repairs, maintains, recreates, and outdoes itself" (22). This idea is pitched at a somewhat different, but related, level by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, who write, "[W]e are constituted in language in a continuous becoming that we bring forth with others" (234-35). What relates the biological creation of life to the discursive production of identity is the concept of autopoiesis ...

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