Download or read book The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets written by Ruth A. Miller and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biopolitics and posthumanism have been passé theories in the academy for a while now, standing on the unfashionable side of the fault line between biology and liberal thought. These days, if people invoke them, they do so a bit apologetically. But, as Ruth Miller argues, we should not be so quick to relegate these terms to the scholarly dustbin. This is because they can help to explain an increasingly important (and contested) influence in modern democratic politics-that of nostalgia. Nostalgia is another somewhat embarrassing concept for the academy. It is that wistful sense of longing for an imaginary and unitary past that leads to an impossible future. And, moreover for this book, it is ordinarily considered "bad" for democracy. But, again, Miller says, not so fast. As she argues in this book, nostalgia is the mode of engagement with the world that allows thought and life to coexist, productively, within democratic politics. Miller demonstrates her theory by looking at nostalgia as a nonhuman mode of "thought" embedded in biopolitical reproduction. To put this another way, she looks at mass democracy as a classically nonhuman affair and nostalgic, nonhuman reproduction as the political activity that makes this democracy happen. To illustrate, Miller draws on the politics surrounding embryos and the modernization of the Turkish alphabet. Situating this argument in feminist theories of biopolitics, this unusual and erudite book demonstrates that nostalgia is not as detrimental to democratic engagement as scholars have claimed.
Download or read book The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets written by Ruth Austin Miller and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades there has been an explosion in work in the social and physical sciences describing the similarities between human and nonhuman as well as human and non-animal thinking. In this work, Ruth Miller argues that these types of phenomena are also useful models for thinking about the growth, reproduction, and spread of political thought and democratic processes. By shifting her level of analysis from the politics of self-determining subjects to the realm of material environments and information systems, Miller asks what might happen if these alternative, nonhuman thought processes become the normative thought processes of democratic engagement.
Download or read book The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets written by Ruth Austin Miller and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades there has been an explosion in work in the social and physical sciences describing the similarities between human and nonhuman as well as human and non-animal thinking. In this work, Ruth Miller argues that these types of phenomena are also useful models for thinking about the growth, reproduction, and spread of political thought and democratic processes. By shifting her level of analysis from the politics of self-determining subjects to the realm of material environments and information systems, Miller asks what might happen if these alternative, nonhuman thought processes become the normative thought processes of democratic engagement.
Download or read book What Is Sexual Difference written by Mary C. Rawlinson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2023-06-06 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Luce Irigaray has written that “sexual difference is one of the major philosophical issues, if not the issue, of our age.” Spanning metaphysics, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis, her work examines how sexual difference structures being and subjectivity, organizes our experience of the world, and affects the images and discourses involved in knowledge production and practical action. No other philosopher has paid such careful attention to the consequences of the elision of sexual difference in philosophical thought. However, at a time when notions of sexual and gender difference are hotly contested, Irigaray’s thought has often been dismissed as essentialist or reductively binary. This book brings together leading scholars to consider the philosophical implications of Irigaray’s writing on sexual difference, particularly for issues of gender and race. Their essays directly confront the charge of essentialism, exploring how Irigaray’s thought opens new possibilities for understanding the complexity of gender identities, including nonbinary and trans experiences as well as alternative configurations of masculinity and femininity. Though Irigaray is sometimes accused of a failure to appreciate racial difference, contributors show the productive role of her work in thinking race. This book also illuminates how Irigaray’s work provides creative practices that help realign human experience and our relations with nature and each other.
Download or read book Animate Literacies written by Nathan Snaza and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-16 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Animate Literacies Nathan Snaza proposes a new theory of literature and literacy in which he outlines how literacy is both constitutive of the social and used as a means to define the human. Weaving new materialism with feminist, queer, and decolonial thought, Snaza theorizes literacy as a contact zone in which humans, nonhuman animals, and nonvital objects such as chairs and paper all become active participants. In readings of classic literature by Kate Chopin, Frederick Douglass, James Joyce, Toni Morrison, Mary Shelley, and others, Snaza emphasizes the key roles that affect and sensory experiences play in literacy. Snaza upends common conceptions of literacy and its relation to print media, showing instead how such understandings reinforce dehumanizations linked to dominant imperialist, heterosexist, and capitalist definitions of the human. The path toward disrupting such exclusionary, humanist frameworks, Snaza contends, lies in formulating alternative practices of literacy and literary study that escape disciplined knowledge production.
Download or read book Flourishing Thought written by Ruth A. Miller and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2020-03-06 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging the posthumanist canon that celebrates the preeminence of matter, Ruth Miller, in Flourishing Thought contends that what nonhuman systems contribute to democracy is thought. Drawing on recent feminist theories of nonhuman life and politics, Miller shows that reproduction and flourishing are not antithetical to contemplation and sensitivity. After demonstrating that processes of life and processes of thought are indistinguishable, Miller finds that four menacing accumulations of matter and information—global surveillance, stored embryos, human clones, and reproductive trash—are politically productive rather than threats to democratic politics. As a consequence, she questions the usefulness of individual rights such as privacy and dignity, contests the value of the rational metaphysics underlying human-centered political participation, and reevaluates the gender relations that derive from this type of participation. Ultimately, in place of these human-centered structures, Miller posits a more meditative mode of democratic engagement. Miller’s argument has shattering implications for the debates over the proper use and disposal of embryonic tissue, alarms about data gathering by the state and corporations, and other major ethical, social, and security issues.
Download or read book Mending Democracy written by Carolyn M. Hendriks and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-10-20 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops the idea of democratic mending as a way of advancing a more connective and systemic approach to democratic repair.
Download or read book Reformation Resistance and Reason of State 1517 1625 written by Sarah Mortimer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-16 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The period 1517-1625 was crucial for the development of political thought. During this time of expanding empires, religious upheaval, and social change, new ideas about the organisation and purpose of human communities began to be debated. In particular, there was a concern to understand the political or civil community as bounded, limited in geographical terms and with its own particular structures, characteristics and history. There was also a growing focus, in the wake of the Reformation, on civil or political authority as distinct from the church or religious authority. The concept of sovereignty began to be used, alongside a new language of reason of state—in response, political theories based upon religion gained traction, especially arguments for the divine right of kings. In this volume Sarah Mortimer highlights how, in the midst of these developments, the language of natural law became increasingly important as a means of legitimising political power, opening up scope for religious toleration. Drawing on a wide range of sources from Europe and beyond, Sarah Mortimer offers a new reading of early modern political thought. She makes connections between Christian Europe and the Muslim societies that lay to its south and east, showing the extent to which concerns about the legitimacy of political power were shared. Mortimer demonstrates that the history of political thought can both benefit from, and remain distinctive within, the wider field of intellectual history. The books in The Oxford History of Political Thought series provide an authoritative overview of the political thought of a particular era. They synthesize and expand major developments in scholarship, covering canonical thinkers while placing them in a context of broader traditions, movements, and debates. The history of political thought has been transformed over the last thirty to forty years. Historians still return to the constant landmarks of writers such as Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Marx; but they have roamed more widely and often thereby cast new light on these authors. They increasingly recognize the importance of archival research, a breadth of sources, contextualization, and historiographical debate. Much of the resulting scholarship has appeared in specialist journals and monographs. The Oxford History of Political Thought makes its profound insights available to a wider audience. Series Editor: Mark Bevir, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for British Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
Download or read book Animacies written by Mel Y. Chen and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rethinks the criteria governing agency and receptivity, health and toxicity, productivity and stillness
Download or read book Tactical Biopolitics written by Beatriz Da Costa and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-08-13 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scientists, scholars, and artists consider the political significance of recent advances in the biological sciences. Popular culture in this “biological century” seems to feed on proliferating fears, anxieties, and hopes around the life sciences at a time when such basic concepts as scientific truth, race and gender identity, and the human itself are destabilized in the public eye. Tactical Biopolitics suggests that the political challenges at the intersection of life, science, and art are best addressed through a combination of artistic intervention, critical theorizing, and reflective practices. Transcending disciplinary boundaries, contributions to this volume focus on the political significance of recent advances in the biological sciences and explore the possibility of public participation in scientific discourse, drawing on research and practice in art, biology, critical theory, anthropology, and cultural studies. After framing the subject in terms of both biology and art, Tactical Biopolitics discusses such topics as race and genetics (with contributions from leading biologists Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins); feminist bioscience; the politics of scientific expertise; bioart and the public sphere (with an essay by artist Claire Pentecost); activism and public health (with an essay by Treatment Action Group co-founder Mark Harrington); biosecurity after 9/11 (with essays by artists' collective Critical Art Ensemble and anthropologist Paul Rabinow); and human-animal interaction (with a framing essay by cultural theorist Donna Haraway). Contributors Gaymon Bennett, Larry Carbone, Karen Cardozo, Gary Cass, Beatriz da Costa, Oron Catts, Gabriella Coleman, Critical Art Ensemble, Gwen D'Arcangelis, Troy Duster, Donna Haraway, Mark Harrington, Jens Hauser, Kathy High, Fatimah Jackson, Gwyneth Jones, Jonathan King, Richard Levins, Richard Lewontin, Rachel Mayeri, Sherie McDonald, Claire Pentecost, Kavita Philip, Paul Rabinow, Banu Subramanian, subRosa, Abha Sur, Samir Sur, Jacqueline Stevens, Eugene Thacker, Paul Vanouse, Ionat Zurr
Download or read book Domestic Colonies written by Barbara Arneil and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines 'domestic colonialism' of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and analyzes domestic colonies empirically - across several countries using primary, archival, and secondary sources - and theoretically, through the writings of leading thinkers of the period.
Download or read book Collective Memory in International Relations written by Kathrin Bachleitner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the influence of collective memory in International Relations (IR). It inquires where a country's memory first emerges and how it guides states through time in world politics, and locates the origins of national memory in political strategies within the internationalenvironment.The study then turns to the domestic landscape, where among a country's public, it finds memory to be the carrier of national identity over time. From there, however, the analysis reverts to the international here: in the medium term, collective memory begins to channel international statebehaviour, whereas, in the long run, it circumvents a country's normative horizons. In this book, collective memory is thus assumed to become manifest in world politics in four varying forms: as a country's political strategy, as its public identity, as underwriting its international statebehaviour, and finally, as a source for its national values. All four theorized manifestations of memory are tested in a comparative study of (West) Germany and Austria and the impact their diverse post-war interpretations of the Nazi legacy had on their international policies over time. With theillustrative help of the empirical cases, the book not only explores whether collective memory has an influence on political outcomes but how and why it matters for IR.
Download or read book The Humanity of Universal Crime written by Sinja Graf and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ""Crimes against humanity" has become integral to contemporary political and legal discourse. The conceptual core of the term - an act offending against all of mankind -, however, runs deep in the history in international political thought. In an original excavation of this history, The Politics of Universal Crime examines theoretical mobilizations of the idea of "universal crime" in colonial and post-colonial contexts. The book demonstrates the overlooked centrality of humanity and criminality to political liberalism's historical engagement with world politics, thereby breaking with the exhaustively studied status of individual rights in liberal thought. It is argued that invocations of universal crime project humanity as a normatively integrated, yet minimally inclusive and hierarchically structured subject. Such visions of humanity have in turn underwritten justifications of foreign rule and outsider intervention based on claims to an injury universally suffered by all mankind. The study foregrounds the "political productivity" of universal crime that entails distinct figures, relationships and forms of authority and agency. The book traces this argument through European political theorists' deployments of universal crime in assessing the legitimacy of colonial rule and foreign intervention in non-European societies. Analyzing John Locke's notion of universal crime in the context of English colonialism, the concept's retooled circulation during the nineteenth century and contemporary cosmopolitanism's reliance on 'crimes against humanity', it identifies an 'inclusionary Eurocentrism' that subtends the authorizing and coercive dimensions of universal crime. Unlike much-studied 'exclusionary Eurocentrist' thinking, 'inclusionary Eurocentrist' arguments have historically extended an unequal, repressive 'recognition via liability' to non-European peoples"--
Download or read book Minimizing Marriage written by Elizabeth Brake and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses fundamental questions about marriage in moral and political philosophy. It examines promise, commitment, care, and contract to argue that marriage is not morally transformative. It argues that marriage discriminates against other forms of caring relationships and that, legally, restrictions on entry should be minimized.
Download or read book Populism and Civil Society written by Andrew Arato and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction -- Populism : why and why now? -- Populism as mobilization and as a party -- Populist governments and their logic -- Populism and constitutionalism -- Alternatives to populism.
Download or read book Political Theory written by David Leopold and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008-07-31 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political Theory: Methods and Approaches is one of the first books to analyze research methods in political theory and political philosophy. Drawing together a distinguished set of contributors, the book asks how political theory should be conducted today and examines the connections between political theory and a range of adjacent disciplines - including moral philosophy, the empirical social sciences, the history of political thought, the world of 'real' politics, critical social theory, and ideology.
Download or read book Self Transformations written by Cressida J. Heyes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-08-16 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heyes' monograph in feminist philosophy is on the connection between the idea of "normalization"--which per Foucault is a mode or force of control that homogenizes a population--and the gendered body. Drawing on Foucault and Wittgenstein, she argues that the predominant picture of the self--a picture that presupposes an "inner" core of the self that is expressed, accurately or not, by the outer body--obscures the connection between contemporary discourses and practices of self-transformation and the forces of normalization. In other words, pictures of the self can hold us captive when they are being read from the outer self--the body--rather than the inner self, and we can express our inner self by working on our outer body to conform. Articulating this idea with a mix of the theoretical and the practical, she looks at case studies involving transgender people, weight-loss dieting, and cosmetic surgery. Her concluding chapters look at the difficult issue of how to distinguish non-normalizing practices of the self from normalizing ones, and makes suggestions about how feminists might conceive of subjects as embodied and enmeshed in power relations yet also capable of self-transformation. The subject of normalization and its relationship to sex/gender is a major one in feminist theory; Heyes' book is unique in her masterful use of Foucault; its clarity, and its sophisticated mix of the theoretical and the anecdotal. It will appeal to feminist philosophers and theorists.
