Test Tube Envy: Science and Power in Argentine Narrative

Test Tube Envy: Science and Power in Argentine Narrative examines the strategies by which narrative shapes scientific discourse and through which popular science determines narrative form over 150 years of the country’s writing. Beginning with Domingo Sarmiento and Argentina’s Generation of 1837 and continuing through authors such as Lucio Mansilla, Roberto Arlt, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar and others, Test Tube Envy explores the construction and exercise of social power on and through scientific expression. The book examines this dynamic in relation to scientific disciplines that range from nineteenth-century phrenology and ethnography to twentieth-century quantum mechanics, cybernetics, and chaos theory. Brown argues that, while the twentieth century introduces a series of complexities to the relationship between science and literature, surprising continuities endure that allow us to understand more fully the literary genealogy of many of Argentina’s writers, while also appreciating new levels of their innovations.