Sarah S. Richardson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226084688
- eISBN:
- 9780226084718
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226084718.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter situates the sex chromosomes within the history of twentieth century theories of sex, gender, and sexuality. The author shows how the X and Y chromosomes, thought of as “sex itself,” ...
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This chapter situates the sex chromosomes within the history of twentieth century theories of sex, gender, and sexuality. The author shows how the X and Y chromosomes, thought of as “sex itself,” came to anchor a conception of sex as a biologically fixed and unalterable binary. The chapter frames the book’s major questions, locating them within scholarship in feminist science studies and social, historical, and philosophical research on the social dimensions of science. The book’s theoretical and methodological innovations, including the concepts of “modeling gender in science,” “gender analysis,” “gender criticality,” and “gender valence,” are introduced and defined.Less
This chapter situates the sex chromosomes within the history of twentieth century theories of sex, gender, and sexuality. The author shows how the X and Y chromosomes, thought of as “sex itself,” came to anchor a conception of sex as a biologically fixed and unalterable binary. The chapter frames the book’s major questions, locating them within scholarship in feminist science studies and social, historical, and philosophical research on the social dimensions of science. The book’s theoretical and methodological innovations, including the concepts of “modeling gender in science,” “gender analysis,” “gender criticality,” and “gender valence,” are introduced and defined.
Kirsten Leng
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501709302
- eISBN:
- 9781501713248
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501709302.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
The Conclusion accounts for the fate of the women whose ideas are examined in this book, and takes stock of the legacies of their sexological work. It further lays out the benefits of pursuing a ...
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The Conclusion accounts for the fate of the women whose ideas are examined in this book, and takes stock of the legacies of their sexological work. It further lays out the benefits of pursuing a larger twentieth century history of women’s sexological work, one that is international in its scope and grapples with the rupture in female sexual knowledge production affected by the Second World War and its geopolitical realignments, the reshuffling of the ideological landscapes after 1945, and the rise of new social movements in the 1960s. Finally, the Conclusion argues that the history of women’s sexological work is especially significant at this particular moment in time, as twenty-first century feminist theorists positively embrace science and nature as intellectual and rhetorical resources once again.Less
The Conclusion accounts for the fate of the women whose ideas are examined in this book, and takes stock of the legacies of their sexological work. It further lays out the benefits of pursuing a larger twentieth century history of women’s sexological work, one that is international in its scope and grapples with the rupture in female sexual knowledge production affected by the Second World War and its geopolitical realignments, the reshuffling of the ideological landscapes after 1945, and the rise of new social movements in the 1960s. Finally, the Conclusion argues that the history of women’s sexological work is especially significant at this particular moment in time, as twenty-first century feminist theorists positively embrace science and nature as intellectual and rhetorical resources once again.
Sarah S. Richardson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226084688
- eISBN:
- 9780226084718
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226084718.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Sex Itself examines the interaction between cultural gender norms and genetic theories of sex from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present postgenomic age. Analyzing the history of ...
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Sex Itself examines the interaction between cultural gender norms and genetic theories of sex from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present postgenomic age. Analyzing the history of human sex chromosomes as gendered objects of scientific knowledge, Sex Itself shows how the X and Y chromosomes came to anchor a conception of sex as a biologically fixed and unalterable binary. Gender has helped to shape the questions that are asked, the theories and models proposed, the research practices employed, and the descriptive language used in the field of sex chromosome research. Using methods from history, philosophy, and gender studies of science, the book demonstrates this through a series of historical case studies. The book’s concluding chapters draw on the history of human sex chromosome research to open a conversation about the methods and models of sex difference research in a genomic age. Methodologically and theoretically, the book engages debates in feminist science studies over how to model and analyze gender bias in science. Advancing a framework for gender studies of science that the author calls “modeling gender in science,” the book argues for an approach that goes beyond a focus on bias to ask what work gender does in a particular area of scientific research and to consider the constructive role of gender conceptions in the knowledge work of science.Less
Sex Itself examines the interaction between cultural gender norms and genetic theories of sex from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present postgenomic age. Analyzing the history of human sex chromosomes as gendered objects of scientific knowledge, Sex Itself shows how the X and Y chromosomes came to anchor a conception of sex as a biologically fixed and unalterable binary. Gender has helped to shape the questions that are asked, the theories and models proposed, the research practices employed, and the descriptive language used in the field of sex chromosome research. Using methods from history, philosophy, and gender studies of science, the book demonstrates this through a series of historical case studies. The book’s concluding chapters draw on the history of human sex chromosome research to open a conversation about the methods and models of sex difference research in a genomic age. Methodologically and theoretically, the book engages debates in feminist science studies over how to model and analyze gender bias in science. Advancing a framework for gender studies of science that the author calls “modeling gender in science,” the book argues for an approach that goes beyond a focus on bias to ask what work gender does in a particular area of scientific research and to consider the constructive role of gender conceptions in the knowledge work of science.
Rebekah Sheldon
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780816689873
- eISBN:
- 9781452955186
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816689873.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The fifth chapter considers the anxious fantasy of life’s withdrawal in contemporary sterility apocalypses. These fantasmatic representations—principally Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men and the ...
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The fifth chapter considers the anxious fantasy of life’s withdrawal in contemporary sterility apocalypses. These fantasmatic representations—principally Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men and the science fiction franchise Battlestar Galactica—hinge on the miraculously restored fertility of a woman of color. Ultimately, these works serve to highlight the history of racialized labor and enforced reproduction.Less
The fifth chapter considers the anxious fantasy of life’s withdrawal in contemporary sterility apocalypses. These fantasmatic representations—principally Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men and the science fiction franchise Battlestar Galactica—hinge on the miraculously restored fertility of a woman of color. Ultimately, these works serve to highlight the history of racialized labor and enforced reproduction.
Rebekah Sheldon
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780816689873
- eISBN:
- 9781452955186
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816689873.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The fourth chapter asks why the figure of the child continues to circulate at all. What sentiments attaches to the child under conditions of neoliberalism and its regimes of flexible accumulation? ...
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The fourth chapter asks why the figure of the child continues to circulate at all. What sentiments attaches to the child under conditions of neoliberalism and its regimes of flexible accumulation? Once upon a time, perhaps, the figure of the child served as a link between the domestic interior and the national domestic, therefore centralizing sexuality and reproduction as the basis for economic vitality and designating the vigor of the household as the mechanism by which the nation rises and falls. By analyzing Margaret Atwood’s 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale next to her MaddAddam trilogy, this chapter explores how humanity’s age of “somatic capitalism” (neoliberalism + biopolitics of reproduction) requires the constrained vitality offered by reproduction and its issues.Less
The fourth chapter asks why the figure of the child continues to circulate at all. What sentiments attaches to the child under conditions of neoliberalism and its regimes of flexible accumulation? Once upon a time, perhaps, the figure of the child served as a link between the domestic interior and the national domestic, therefore centralizing sexuality and reproduction as the basis for economic vitality and designating the vigor of the household as the mechanism by which the nation rises and falls. By analyzing Margaret Atwood’s 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale next to her MaddAddam trilogy, this chapter explores how humanity’s age of “somatic capitalism” (neoliberalism + biopolitics of reproduction) requires the constrained vitality offered by reproduction and its issues.
Rebekah Sheldon
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780816689873
- eISBN:
- 9781452955186
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816689873.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The first chapter considers the predictively foreclosed temporality through which popular environmentalism gains its sense. It reads the child as a crucial affective and conceptual technology ...
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The first chapter considers the predictively foreclosed temporality through which popular environmentalism gains its sense. It reads the child as a crucial affective and conceptual technology allowing environmentalism to disavow its central insight that matter is mobile. It also looks into and compares the disavowal to feminist new materialist accounts of the queerness of matter.Less
The first chapter considers the predictively foreclosed temporality through which popular environmentalism gains its sense. It reads the child as a crucial affective and conceptual technology allowing environmentalism to disavow its central insight that matter is mobile. It also looks into and compares the disavowal to feminist new materialist accounts of the queerness of matter.
