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Performance All the Way Down

Genes, Development, and Sexual Difference

Häftad, Engelska, 2023

AvRichard O. Prum

259 kr

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An award-winning biologist and writer applies queer feminist theory to developmental genetics, arguing that individuals are not essentially male or female. The idea that gender is a performance—a tenet of queer feminist theory since the nineties—has spread from college classrooms to popular culture. This transformative concept has sparked reappraisals of social expectations as well as debate over not just gender, but sex: what it is, what it means, and how we know it. Most scientific and biomedical research over the past seventy years has assumed and reinforced a binary concept of biological sex, though some scientists point out that male and female are just two outcomes in a world rich in sexual diversity. In Performance All the Way Down, MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize finalist Richard O. Prum brings feminist thought into conversation with biology, arguing that the sexual binary is not essential to human genes, chromosomes, or embryos. Our genomes are not blueprints, algorithms, or recipes for the physical representation of our individual sexual essences or fates. In accessible language, Prum shows that when we look closely at the science, we see that gene expression is a material action in the world, a performance through which the individual regulates and achieves its own becoming. A fertilized zygote matures into an organism with tissues and organs, neurological control, immune defenses, psychological mechanisms, and gender and sexual behavior through a performative continuum. This complex hierarchy of self-enactment reflects the evolved agency of individual genes, molecules, cells, and tissues. Rejecting the notion of an intractable divide between the humanities and the sciences, Prum proves that the contributions of queer and feminist theorists can help scientists understand the human body in new ways, yielding key insights into genetics, developmental biology, physiology. Sure to inspire discussion, Performance All the Way Down is a book about biology for feminists, a book about feminist theory for biologists, and a book for anyone curious about how our sexual bodies grow.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2023-11-16
Mått152 x 229 x 25 mm
Vikt540 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Seriescience.culture
Antal sidor368
FörlagThe University of Chicago Press
ISBN9780226829784

Tillhör följande kategorier

Anatomi inom Medicin
Genusvetenskap inom Samhälle och politik
Biologi inom Naturvetenskap och teknik

Richard O. Prum is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology at Yale University, and the head curator of vertebrate zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum. He is the author of The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us, one of the New York Times’s “10 Best Books of 2017” and a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.

List of IllustrationsPrologue Taking Birds Seriously A Humanistic TurnAn Ornithologist for Intersectionality1. Performance All the Way Down Material FeminismsA Performative ContinuumWhat Is the Role of Metaphor in Biology?What Is at Stake?The Stakes for Evolutionary BiologyMind the GapWhy Queer Biology?Where Are We Going?2. Critical Concepts What Are Male and Female?Historical OntologySex Is a HistorySex Difference versus Sexual DifferenceSex and RaceSexual Development and DifferentiationThe Sexual PhenotypeSex Determination and Sex ReversalDiscourseAgencyQueer and Queering3. Gender Performativity What Is Performativity?Elements of PerformativityPerformativity and Trans ExperienceBetween Butler and Barad4. The Enactment of the Biological Self Genes and DevelopmentWhat Is Molecular Discourse?Want to Go to the Movies on Friday?How Discourse Becomes Genetic Action within CellsThe Choreography of Gene ExpressionThe Performative Phenotypic LandscapeCanonical versus Performative PathwaysHow Does the Body Regulate Growth over Space?What Is the Role of Physical Forces in Development?Performativity of Cellular DiscourseAre Genes Causes?Agency in Developmental BiologyCitationality and HomologyPosthuman PowerPhysiology and ImmunityNeurobiology and PsychologySexual SelectionWhat Is Not Performative in Biology?Why Performative Biology Now?5. How Do Our Sexual Bodies Develop? The Role of ChromosomesOn Gene NomenclatureHow Do Gonads Differentiate?Reproductive Tract DevelopmentGenital DevelopmentPost-embryonic Sexual DevelopmentSexual Development Summary6. Variations in Our Sexual Development Terminology and the Framing of Embodied Sexual VariationMoving beyond PathologyChromosomal Contributions to Differences in Sexual DevelopmentGenetic Variations in Gonad DevelopmentX Chromosome InactivationGenital and Reproductive Tract DevelopmentNoncoding Genetic VariationHow Does the Environment Affect Sexual Development?Queer Science7. How Evolution Generates Sexual Variability The Evolution of SexEvolutionary Variability of Sexual Development InitiationWhy Sexual Differentiation Mechanisms Are Generatively QueeringSexually Disruptive SelectionEvolution of the Molecular Discourse of Sexual DevelopmentEvolution of Sexual TransitionEvolution Is Incompatible with Sexual EssencesNorms and InnovationPlacental PerformativityLimits of the Binary Bottleneck8. The Future of Performative Biology Performative Scientific HypothesesPerformativity of Illness and DisabilityRecalibrating CausalityBiology Is Ready to Think PerformativelyPluralism and the PhenotypeWhat Is Evolutionary Biology About?9. Performance All the Way Up Sexual Reproduction Is an Intra-actionA Posthuman Genealogy of Performative DiscourseIs There Gender in Nature?“What Is Sex?” RevisitedToward a Scientific/Cultural Concept of Gender/SexPerformative Perspectives on Transsexual ExperienceSex and Race as Scientific ApparatusesSex and Race Categories in Biomedical ResearchPost-disciplinary Material FeminismsAn Intellectually Queer Space in ScienceAcknowledgmentsAppendixes Appendix 1. Material FeminismsAppendix 2. Acquired ImmunityAppendix 3. Current Models of the Genotype-Phenotype RelationshipAppendix 4. ModularityAppendix 5. Genetic AssimilationAppendix 6. Why Gene-Level Selection Is InsufficientAppendix 7. Internal Selection NotesBibliographyIndex

“Readers of [Prum’s] earlier work, including his 2017 book, The Evolution of Beauty, will find themselves intrigued by his continued engagement with feminist science studies—and he has done his homework. . . . Performance All the Way Down contains a lot of big ideas, both because of the biological content Prum strives to convey to his readers and because of the sophisticated nature of the feminist theory he mobilizes. . . . To understand the full scope of Prum’s vision, I encourage you to read it in full.”