Glass Bodies: Cultural Memory in the Present

Glass Bodies tells the story of how transparent humans have appeared throughout European history – in fiction, philosophy, and science – and what they reveal about changing ideas of the human.

The book takes off in antiquity with the myth of Momus, who reproaches the gods for failing to build a window into the human heart so that humans' thoughts and wishes would be visible. From there, it follows transparent figures into the works of Cervantes, Rousseau, Sterne, and Goethe, and into the world of science, medicine, and public exhibitions: from mechanic eighteenth-century medical models to the famous Transparent Anatomical Manikin displayed in science museums. Elena Fabietti weaves together literature, cultural history, and material culture to show how transparent humans reflected the dreams and anxieties of their own time and how they were shaped by specific material conditions, the history of glass production, and scientific and medical beliefs.

Glass bodies, Fabietti shows, have always been more than curiosities; they served as speculative, normative, or utopian figures through which cultural tensions were articulated, revealing how people thought about the body, its agency, and limitations.