Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race - Couverture souple

Samuels, Ellen

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1479859494 ISBN 13 : 9781479859498

Editeur : New York University Press, 2014

Synopsis

Explores the roots of modern understandings of bodily identity

In the mid-nineteenth-century United States, as it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between bodies understood as black, white, or Indian; able-bodied or disabled; and male or female, intense efforts emerged to define these identities as biologically distinct and scientifically verifiable in a literally marked body. Combining literary analysis, legal history, and visual culture, Ellen Samuels traces the evolution of the "fantasy of identification"--the powerful belief that embodied social identities are fixed, verifiable, and visible through modern science. From birthmarks and fingerprints to blood quantum and DNA, she examines how this fantasy has circulated between cultural representations, law, science, and policy to become one of the most powerfully institutionalized ideologies of modern society.

Yet, as Samuels demonstrates, in every case, the fantasy distorts its claimed scientific basis, substituting subjective language for claimed objective fact. From its early emergence in discourses about disability fakery and fugitive slaves in the nineteenth century to its most recent manifestation in the question of sex testing at the 2012 Olympic Games, Fantasies of Identification explores the roots of modern understandings of bodily identity.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Ellen Samuels is Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies and English at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: New York University Press
• Date d'édition: 2014
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1479859494
• ISBN 13: 9781479859498
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 273
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Pays-Bas