Poison and Poisoning in Science, Fiction and Cinema: Precarious Identities

This book is about poison and poisonings; it explores the facts, fears and fictions that surround this fascinating topic. Poisons attract attention because they are both dangerous and  hard to discover. Secretive and invisible, they are a challenging object of representation. How do science studies, literature, and especially film―the medium of the visible―explain and show what is hidden? How can we deal with uncertainties emerging from the ambivalence of dangerous substances? These considerations lead the editors of this volume to the notion of “precarious identities” as a key discursive marker of poisons and related substances. This book is unique in facilitating a multi-faceted conversation between disciplines. It draws on examples from historical cases of poisoning; figurations of uncertainty and blurred boundaries in literature; and cinematic examples, from early cinema and arthouse to documentary and blockbuster. The contributions work with concepts from gender studies, new materialism, post-colonialism, deconstructivism, motif studies, and discourse analysis.

Heike Klippel is Professor of Film Studies at the Braunschweig University of Art, Germany. 

Anke Zechner was a research fellow on the DFG project “The Poison Motif in Film” and is currently working on a research project on Poisonous Cinema.

Bettina Wahrig is Professor of the History of Science and Pharmacy at Braunschweig University of Technology, Germany.