Fantasies of identification : disability, gender, race /
"In the mid-nineteenth-century United States, as it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between bodies understood as black, white, or Indian; able-bodied or disabled; and male or female, intense efforts emerged to define these identities as biologically distinct and scientifically veri...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Language Notes: | English. |
| Published: |
New York :
New York University Press,
[2014]
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| Series: | Cultural front
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | "In the mid-nineteenth-century United States, as it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between bodies understood as black, white, or Indian; able-bodied or disabled; and male or female, intense efforts emerged to define these identities as biologically distinct and scientifically verifiable in a literally marked body. Combining literary analysis, legal history, and visual culture, Ellen Samuels traces the evolution of the "fantasy of identification"--The powerful belief that embodied social identities are fixed, verifiable, and visible through modern science. From birthmarks and fingerprints to blood quantum and DNA, she examines how this fantasy has circulated between cultural representations, law, science, and policy to become one of the most powerfully institutionalized ideologies of modern society."--Provided by publisher |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (x, 263 pages). |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-258) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781479855049 1479855049 |