Donna J Haraway: Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (1991–) [EN, ES]
Filed under book | Tags: · animal, body, capitalism, culture, cyberfeminism, cyborg, feminism, gender, nature
“The idea that nature is constructed, not discovered – that truth is made, not found – is the keynote of recent scholarship in the history of science. Tracing the gendered roots of science in culture, Donna Haraway’s writings about scientific research on monkeys and apes is arguably the finest scholarship in this tradition. She has carefully studied the publications, the papers, the correspondence, and the history of the expeditions and institions of primate studies, uncovering the historical construction of the pedigrees for existing social relations – the naturalization of race, sex, and class. Throughout this book she is analysing accounts, narratives, and stories of the creation of nature, living organisms, and cyborgs (cybernetic organisms: systems which embrace organic and technological components). She also looks critically at the immune system as an information system, and shows how deeply our cultural assumptions penetrate into allegedly value-neutral medical research. In several of these essays she explores and develops the contested terms of reference of existing feminist scholarship; and by mapping the fate of two potent and ambiguous worlds – ‘nature’ and ‘experience’ – she uncovers new visions and provides the possibility of a new politics of hope.
Her previous book, Primate Visions, has been called ‘outstanding’, ‘original’, ‘brilliant’, ‘important’ by leading scholars in the field. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women contains ten essays written between 1978 and 1989. They establish her as one of the most thoughtful and challenging feminist writers today.”
Publisher Routledge, New York, 1991
ISBN 1853431397, 9781853431395
287 pages
Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (English, 1991, updated on 2012-7-31)
Ciencia, cyborgs y mujeres. La reinvención de la naturaleza (Spanish, trans. Manuel Talens, 1995, added on 2014-3-18)
Judith Roof: The Poetics of DNA (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · biology, gender, genetics, genome, genome mapping, structuralism
Reveals the ideological effects of DNA metaphors and stories.
How has DNA come to be seen as a cosmic truth, representative of all life, potential for all cures, repository for all identity, and end to all stories? In The Poetics of DNA, Judith Roof examines the rise of this powerful symbol and the implications of its ascendancy for the ways we think—about ourselves, about one another, and about the universe.
Descriptions of DNA, Roof argues, have distorted ideas and transformed nucleic acid into the answer to all questions of life. This hyperbolized notion of DNA, inevitably confused or conflated with the “gene,” has become a vector through which older ways of thinking can merge with the new, advancing long-discredited and insidious ideas about such things as eugenics and racial selection and influencing contemporary debates, particularly the popular press obsession with the “gay gene.” Through metaphors of DNA, she contends, racist and homophobic ideology is masked as progressive science.
Grappling with twentieth-century intellectual movements as well as contemporary societal anxieties, The Poetics of DNA reveals how descriptions of DNA and genes typify a larger set of epistemological battles that play out not only through the assumptions associated with DNA but also through less evident methods of magical thinking, reductionism, and pseudoscience.
For the first time, Roof exposes the ideology and cultural consequences of DNA and gene metaphors to uncover how, ultimately, they are paradigms used to recreate prejudices.
Publisher U of Minnesota Press, 2007
ISBN 0816649979, 9780816649976
Length 243 pages
More info (publisher)
More info (google books)
Angharad N. Valdivia (ed.): A Companion to Media Studies (2005)
Filed under book | Tags: · advertising, audience, cultural studies, feminism, gender, intellectual property, mass media, media studies, politics, popular culture, pornography, television, theory
A Companion to Media Studies is a comprehensive collection that brings together new writings by some of the most respected canonical and contemporary media studies scholars to provide an overview of the theories and methodologies that have produced this most interdisciplinary of fields.
* Brings together new writings by some of the most respected canonical and contemporary media studies scholars in the most comprehensive collection on media studies to date.
* Tackles a variety of central concepts and controversies, organized into six areas of study: foundations, production, media content, media audiences, effects, and futures.
* Provides an accessible point of entry into this expansive and interdisciplinary field.
* Includes the writings of renowned media scholars, including McQuail, Schiller, Gallagher, Wartella, and Bryant.
Publisher Wiley-Blackwell, 2005
ISBN 1405141743, 9781405141741
590 pages
PDF (updated on 2013-3-28)
Comment (0)