Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race by Ellen Samuels


Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race
Title : Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : -
Language : English
Format Type : Kindle Edition
Number of Pages : 268
Publication : First published April 25, 2014

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.

Yet, as Samuels demonstrates, in every case, the fantasy distorts its claimed scientific basis, substituting subjective language for claimed objective fact. From its early emergence in discourses about disability fakery and fugitive slaves in the nineteenth century to its most recent manifestation in the question of sex testing at the 2012 Olympic Games, Fantasies of Identification explores the roots of modern understandings of bodily identity.

Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race Reviews

  • Jessica

    2.5 stars. Really struggled on how to rate this. Interesting ideas, but the literary analysis method really didn't work for me so I ended up skipping a few chapters. I kind of feel like this is the type of academic reading that's aimed at undergraduates who only want to read one chapter. But if that's the case, why not just make it a series of articles? I mean, I know why -- the author teaches English and that disciple values books over articles. And Madison has some really goofy-restrictive tenure requirements. I really wish publish or perish would die. Anyway, rounding up because I did learn new things/new ways of looking at things, and I always appreciate that. The whole biocertification thing was fascinating, even though the presentation was both disjointed and repetitive.

  • shakemountains

    I read two articles from this book, but you can't just mark singular essays as read on goodreads ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  • Mills College Library

    305.908 S1937 2014