Feminism and the Biological Body - Hardcover

Birke, Lynda I. A

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813528224 ISBN 13: 9780813528229

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2000

Synopsis

What is a body? What are our perceptions of our inner bodies? How are these perceptions influenced? In recent years, thinking about the body has become highly fashionable. However, the renewed focus, while certainly welcome, seems to always end at the corporeal surface. While recent sociological and feminist theory has made important claims about the process of cultural inscription on the body, and about the cultural representation of the body, what actually appears in this new theory seems to be, ironically, disembodied. If this newly theorized form has interiority, it is one that is explained predominantly through psychoanalysis. The physiological processes remain a mystery to be explained, if at all, only in the esoteric language of biomedicine. As a trained biologist, Lynda Birke was frustrated by the gap between feminist cultural analysis and her own scientific background. In this book, she seeks to bridge this gap using ideas in anatomy and physiology to develop the feminist view that the biological body is socially and culturally constructed. Birke rejects the assumption that bodily function is somehow fixed and unchanging, claiming that biology offers more than just a deterministic narrative of how nature works. Feminism and the Biological Body brings natural science and feminist theory together and suggests that we need a new politics that includes, rather than denies, our flesh.

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Review:

A fascinating and successful narrative which simultaneously embodies feminist theory and centers the female body within the discipline of biology. Effectively probes beneath the female body's well-theorised outer surfaces, to explore the cultural valency of its inner mechanisms. The effect of this 're-telling' of biological narratives effectively dismantles the gendered and often dualistic biomedical stories told about it. A fascinating and successful narrative which simultaneously embodies feminist theory and centers the female body within the discipline of biology. Effectively probes beneath the female body's well-theorised outer surfaces, to explore the cultural valency of its inner mechanisms. The effect of this 're-telling' of biological narratives effectively dismantles the gendered and often dualistic biomedical stories told about it.

About this edition

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0813528224
• ISBN 13: 9780813528229
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 204