Elana Gomel
Biographic Data
| ID | 1376306 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Elana Gomel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Elana |
| FAMILY NAME | Gomel |
| SIGNATURE | GOMEL E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tel Aviv University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5844-4603 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Lunar Gothic
The Palgrave Handbook of Global Fantasy
This book provides a comprehensive overview of fantasy outside the Anglo-American hegemony and focuses on the theoretical aspects of fantasy.
The House of Pain
H. G. Wells’ novel The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) is a bleak critique of the Victorian notion that evolution can provide ethical or social guidance to humanity. This essay reads the novel in the context of the contemporary debate between posthumanism and transhumanism. By applying theoretical models derived from Braidotti, Agamben, Wolfe and others, the essay argues that Wells’ evolutionary antihumanism provides a corrective to both critical pos…
Memory of the Present
Memory of the Present Elana Gomel (bio) Carter F. Hanson. Memory and Utopian Agency in Utopian/Dystopian Literature: Memory of the Future. Routledge, 2020. xvii + 199 pp. $160 hc. Utopia is about the future; memory is about the past. This seems so self-evident that the notion that memory can play a constitutive role in utopia appears far-fetched. If utopia is a vision of an ideal future, then it has to reject the less than ideal past. In many uto…
Recycled Dystopias
While cyberpunk is often described as a dystopian genre, the paper argues that it should be seen rather as a post-utopian one. The crucial difference between the two resides in the nature of the historical imagination reflected in their respective narrative and thematic conventions. While dystopia and utopia (structurally the same genre) reflect a teleological vision of history, in which the future is radically different from the present, post-ut…
Diachronic and Synchronic
Multiculturalism in Israel
Adia Mendelson-Maoz’ Multiculturalism in Israel: Literary Perspectives surveys and analyzes the literary output of several minority communities in Israel: Palestinian citizens of Israel; Jews of no
To Be or Not To Be
No Fantasy after Auschwitz
Finding the Right Metaphor
Posthuman Voices
Science (Fiction) and Posthuman Ethics
The boundaries of the ethical have traditionally coincided with the boundaries of humanity. This, however, is no longer the case. Scientific developments, such as genetic engineering, stem-cell research, cloning, the Human Genome Project, new paleontological evidence, and the rise of neuropsychology call into question the very notion of human being and thus require a new conceptual map for ethical judgment. The contours of this map may be seen to…
Spirits in the Material World”
B OOKS ARE SOMETIMES published posthumously. In the nineteenth century, books were occasionally written posthumously when spiritualist mediums claimed to receive communications from the spirits of famous writers anxious to keep in touch with their public from beyond the grave. Oscar Wilde wrote his last book twenty-six years after his death, Oscar Wilde from Purgatory: Psychic Messages (1926), edited by Hester Travers Smith, the medium who receiv…
Altered States
Reviewed by: Altered States: Sex, Nation, Drugs, and Self-Transformation in Victorian Spiritualism, and: Possessed Victorians: Extra Spheres in Nineteenth-Century Mystical Writings Elana Gomel (bio) Altered States: Sex, Nation, Drugs, and Self-Transformation in Victorian Spiritualism, by Marlene Tromp; pp. xi + 225. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006, $65.00, $24.95 paper. Possessed Victorians: Extra Spheres in Nineteenth-Century My…
Translating Orients
Book Review| January 01 2006 Translating Orients: Between Ideology and Utopia Translating Orients: Between Ideology and UtopiaWeiss, Timothy Elana Gomel Elana Gomel Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Utopian Studies (2006) 17 (1): 224–227. https://doi.org/10.2307/20718805 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Elana Gomel; Translating Orients: Between Ideology and Utopia. Utopian Studies 1…
Gods Like Men
This essay deals with the representation of the New Man in Soviet sf. The New Man is the ideal subject whose creation was one of the central goals of Soviet civilization. Soviet sf reflects the ideological paradox underlying his aborted birth: the New Man was supposed to come into being as the culmination of the historical process and, at the same time, to negate the contingency and violence of history. The article focuses on the articulation of …
Cronenberg, Greenaway and the Ideologies of Twinship
This article deals with the representation of identical twins in the films Zed and Two Noughts by Peter Greenaway and Dead Ringers by David Cronenberg. It situates the films in a cultural and political context of the 20th-century controversies surrounding the issues of evolution, reproduction and cloning. The article claims that twinship represents the corporeal economy of the Same, whose ideological meanings have been shaped by the history of eu…
The Plague of Utopias
From Dr. Moreau to Dr. Mengele
This article discusses the cultural genealogy of the image of Dr. Death:the godlike surgeon with power over life and death, who uses this power to torture and mutilate. First appearing in H. G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), this image has become firmly associated with Nazi medicine, as demonstrated by Lucius Shepard's short story“Mengele” (1989). This association accurately reflects the ideological trajectory, which involves the tra…
Aliens Among Us
The putative of history does not mean death of historical narrative; rather, it indicates a proliferation of competing stories, the fragmentation of grand into narratives (Currie 107). A sort of pseudo-Darwinian evolution occurs among these little narratives, each attempting to capture vacant throne of master narrative. This evolution is a political process, taking place in arena of power, and each little is an ideology-in-the-making. Fredric Jam…
What Is Jewish Literature
Escape from Science Fiction
Mystery, Apocalypse and Utopia
Apocalypse in sf is often linked to a utopian transformation that creates a "brave new world" on the ruins of the old one. This is a pattern that has often been noted by critics. However, a number of sf works display an interesting twist on this pattern, linking the apocalypse and the subsequent utopian transformation to the solution of an ontological mystery. Thus, they form an sf subgenre that might be described as the "ontological detective st…
Spirits in the Material World”
B OOKS ARE SOMETIMES published posthumously. In the nineteenth century, books were occasionally written posthumously when spiritualist mediums claimed to receive communications from the spirits of famous writers anxious to keep in touch with their public from beyond the grave. Oscar Wilde wrote his last book twenty-six years after his death, Oscar Wilde from Purgatory: Psychic Messages (1926), edited by Hester Travers Smith, the medium who receiv…
Gods Like Men
This essay deals with the representation of the New Man in Soviet sf. The New Man is the ideal subject whose creation was one of the central goals of Soviet civilization. Soviet sf reflects the ideological paradox underlying his aborted birth: the New Man was supposed to come into being as the culmination of the historical process and, at the same time, to negate the contingency and violence of history. The article focuses on the articulation of …
Cronenberg, Greenaway and the Ideologies of Twinship
This article deals with the representation of identical twins in the films Zed and Two Noughts by Peter Greenaway and Dead Ringers by David Cronenberg. It situates the films in a cultural and political context of the 20th-century controversies surrounding the issues of evolution, reproduction and cloning. The article claims that twinship represents the corporeal economy of the Same, whose ideological meanings have been shaped by the history of eu…
Mystery, Apocalypse and Utopia
Apocalypse in sf is often linked to a utopian transformation that creates a "brave new world" on the ruins of the old one. This is a pattern that has often been noted by critics. However, a number of sf works display an interesting twist on this pattern, linking the apocalypse and the subsequent utopian transformation to the solution of an ontological mystery. Thus, they form an sf subgenre that might be described as the "ontological detective st…
Escape from Science Fiction
Mystery, Apocalypse and Utopia
Apocalypse in sf is often linked to a utopian transformation that creates a "brave new world" on the ruins of the old one. This is a pattern that has often been noted by critics. However, a number of sf works display an interesting twist on this pattern, linking the apocalypse and the subsequent utopian transformation to the solution of an ontological mystery. Thus, they form an sf subgenre that might be described as the "ontological detective st…
What Is Jewish Literature
The Plague of Utopias
From Dr. Moreau to Dr. Mengele
This article discusses the cultural genealogy of the image of Dr. Death:the godlike surgeon with power over life and death, who uses this power to torture and mutilate. First appearing in H. G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), this image has become firmly associated with Nazi medicine, as demonstrated by Lucius Shepard's short story“Mengele” (1989). This association accurately reflects the ideological trajectory, which involves the tra…
Aliens Among Us
The putative of history does not mean death of historical narrative; rather, it indicates a proliferation of competing stories, the fragmentation of grand into narratives (Currie 107). A sort of pseudo-Darwinian evolution occurs among these little narratives, each attempting to capture vacant throne of master narrative. This evolution is a political process, taking place in arena of power, and each little is an ideology-in-the-making. Fredric Jam…
Cronenberg, Greenaway and the Ideologies of Twinship
This article deals with the representation of identical twins in the films Zed and Two Noughts by Peter Greenaway and Dead Ringers by David Cronenberg. It situates the films in a cultural and political context of the 20th-century controversies surrounding the issues of evolution, reproduction and cloning. The article claims that twinship represents the corporeal economy of the Same, whose ideological meanings have been shaped by the history of eu…
Gods Like Men
This essay deals with the representation of the New Man in Soviet sf. The New Man is the ideal subject whose creation was one of the central goals of Soviet civilization. Soviet sf reflects the ideological paradox underlying his aborted birth: the New Man was supposed to come into being as the culmination of the historical process and, at the same time, to negate the contingency and violence of history. The article focuses on the articulation of …
Translating Orients
Book Review| January 01 2006 Translating Orients: Between Ideology and Utopia Translating Orients: Between Ideology and UtopiaWeiss, Timothy Elana Gomel Elana Gomel Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Utopian Studies (2006) 17 (1): 224–227. https://doi.org/10.2307/20718805 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Elana Gomel; Translating Orients: Between Ideology and Utopia. Utopian Studies 1…
Spirits in the Material World”
B OOKS ARE SOMETIMES published posthumously. In the nineteenth century, books were occasionally written posthumously when spiritualist mediums claimed to receive communications from the spirits of famous writers anxious to keep in touch with their public from beyond the grave. Oscar Wilde wrote his last book twenty-six years after his death, Oscar Wilde from Purgatory: Psychic Messages (1926), edited by Hester Travers Smith, the medium who receiv…
Altered States
Reviewed by: Altered States: Sex, Nation, Drugs, and Self-Transformation in Victorian Spiritualism, and: Possessed Victorians: Extra Spheres in Nineteenth-Century Mystical Writings Elana Gomel (bio) Altered States: Sex, Nation, Drugs, and Self-Transformation in Victorian Spiritualism, by Marlene Tromp; pp. xi + 225. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006, $65.00, $24.95 paper. Possessed Victorians: Extra Spheres in Nineteenth-Century My…
Science (Fiction) and Posthuman Ethics
The boundaries of the ethical have traditionally coincided with the boundaries of humanity. This, however, is no longer the case. Scientific developments, such as genetic engineering, stem-cell research, cloning, the Human Genome Project, new paleontological evidence, and the rise of neuropsychology call into question the very notion of human being and thus require a new conceptual map for ethical judgment. The contours of this map may be seen to…
Posthuman Voices
Finding the Right Metaphor
No Fantasy after Auschwitz
Multiculturalism in Israel
Adia Mendelson-Maoz’ Multiculturalism in Israel: Literary Perspectives surveys and analyzes the literary output of several minority communities in Israel: Palestinian citizens of Israel; Jews of no
To Be or Not To Be
Recycled Dystopias
While cyberpunk is often described as a dystopian genre, the paper argues that it should be seen rather as a post-utopian one. The crucial difference between the two resides in the nature of the historical imagination reflected in their respective narrative and thematic conventions. While dystopia and utopia (structurally the same genre) reflect a teleological vision of history, in which the future is radically different from the present, post-ut…
Diachronic and Synchronic
Memory of the Present
Memory of the Present Elana Gomel (bio) Carter F. Hanson. Memory and Utopian Agency in Utopian/Dystopian Literature: Memory of the Future. Routledge, 2020. xvii + 199 pp. $160 hc. Utopia is about the future; memory is about the past. This seems so self-evident that the notion that memory can play a constitutive role in utopia appears far-fetched. If utopia is a vision of an ideal future, then it has to reject the less than ideal past. In many uto…
The Palgrave Handbook of Global Fantasy
This book provides a comprehensive overview of fantasy outside the Anglo-American hegemony and focuses on the theoretical aspects of fantasy.
The House of Pain
H. G. Wells’ novel The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) is a bleak critique of the Victorian notion that evolution can provide ethical or social guidance to humanity. This essay reads the novel in the context of the contemporary debate between posthumanism and transhumanism. By applying theoretical models derived from Braidotti, Agamben, Wolfe and others, the essay argues that Wells’ evolutionary antihumanism provides a corrective to both critical pos…
Lunar Gothic
Art (20 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Aesthetics (12 works) · Literature (12 works) · History (10 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Art history (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Political science (6 works)