From Drama to Science: Margaret Cavendish as Vanishing Mediator

Abstract

This paper introduces a Literature Compass cluster on Margaret Cavendish. The full cluster is made up of the following articles: 'Recent Developments in the Study of Seventeenth-Century Literature and Three

Developing the Vanishing Mediator as Theoretical Framework: Synthesis and Application

“…For Cyoro (2012), Žižek's account of the concept of the vanishing mediator is vital in assessing turbo-folk as making possible the apolitical transnational contemporary pop through its nationalist 'excess' and vanishes when the 'new' Serbia attempts to purge nationalist elements. In another study, Shanahan (2008) claims that Cavendish is a vanishing mediator in the development of experimental science when after she contributed to the conceptual formation of the new science in the seventeenth century by imagining highly forensic spaces or examination of rival hypotheses and by focusing on the inherent theatricality of empirical experimentation, she vanishes as the New Royal Society disavowed and rendered her work invisible. Gigante (1998) also uses Žižek's concept of the vanishing mediator but on different direction, that is, Žižek himself is a vanishing mediator who stands in-between various theoretical points of view (e.g.…”