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Record W1514793306 · doi:10.1111/lic3.12198

Gendering Pseudo‐Science: Inchbald's <i>Animal Magnetism</i>

2014· article· en· W1514793306 on OpenAlexaff
Nathaniel Leach

Bibliographic record

VenueLiterature Compass · 2014
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldArts and Humanities
TopicGerman Literature and Culture Studies
Canadian institutionsCape Breton University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsPower (physics)MagnetismSociologyAnimal speciesPsychologyPsychoanalysisBiologyZoologyPhysicsCondensed matter physicsQuantum mechanics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract Elizabeth Inchbald's Animal Magnetism , adapted from Le Médecin Malgré tout le monde by Antoine‐Jean‐Bourlin Dumaniant, engages with a highly controversial issue of the late eighteenth century, the claims made by Anton Mesmer, among others, for the science of “animal magnetism.” A commission appointed by the King of France determined that the effects claimed to be produced by animal magnetism were merely theatrical and imaginative, qualities that were feminized in an attempt to denigrate animal magnetism as pseudo‐science. Inchbald's play follows this attack by satirizing animal magnetism through the absurd character of an old doctor who wishes to learn this pseudo‐science in order to manipulate the affections of his young ward. Inchbald's satire, however, encompasses not only the fraudulent pseudo‐science but also the official patriarchal power that the doctor also represents. Inchbald thus demonstrates the proximity between official structures of power and the supposedly fraudulent pseudo‐science, and meta‐theatrically stages the performance of animal magnetism in a way that exposes the impostures of both. Ultimately, the play valorizes the fluidity of performance demonstrated by the younger characters, and holds up for ridicule the doctor's untheatrical belief in his own “natural” power. The play thereby suggests that what is most dangerous about animal magnetism is in fact its reproduction of and not its divergence from, “legitimate” discourses of power.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.003
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.003
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesScience and technology studies
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.992
Threshold uncertainty score0.053

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0030.003
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.000
Science and technology studies0.0080.030
Scholarly communication0.0080.003
Open science0.0010.004
Research integrity0.0030.005
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0060.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.011
GPT teacher head0.210
Teacher spread0.200 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2014
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueLiterature CompassSame topicGerman Literature and Culture StudiesFrench-language works237,207