Becoming undone : Darwinian reflections on life, politics, and art / Elizabeth Grosz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grosz, Elizabeth.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Feminist theory.

Sex role.

Natural selection.

Physical Description:

viii, 264 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham [N.C.] : Duke University Press, 2011.

Summary:

In Becoming Undone, Elizabeth Grosz addresses three related concepts-life, politics, and art-by exploring the implications of Charles Darwin's account of the evolution of species. Challenging characterizations of Darwin's work as a form of genetic determinism, Grosz shows that his writing reveals an insistence on the difference between natural selection and sexual selection, the principles that regulate survival and attractiveness, respectively. Sexual selection complicates natural selection by introducing aesthetic factors and the expression of individual will, desire, or pleasure. Grosz explores how Darwin's theory of sexual selection transforms philosophy, our understanding of humanity in its male and female forms, our ideas of political relations, and our concepts of art. Connecting the naturalist's work to the writings of Bergson, Deleuze, and Irigaray, she outlines a postmodern Darwinism that understands all of life as forms of competing and coordinating modes of openness. Although feminists have been suspicious of the concepts of nature and biology central to Darwin's work, radical, and far-reaching feminist understanding of matter, nature, nature, biology, time, and becoming. Book jacket.

Contents:

The inhuman in the humanities : Darwin and the ends of man

Deleuze, Bergson, and the concept of life

Bergson, Deleuze, and difference

Feminism, materialism, and freedom

The future of feminist theory : dreams for new knowledges

Differences disturbing identity : Deleuze and feminism

Irigaray and the ontology of sexual difference

Darwin and the split between natural and sexual selection

Sexual difference as sexual selection : Irigarayan reflections on Darwin

Art and the animal

Living art and the art of life : women's painting from the western desert.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780822350538

082235053X

9780822350712

0822350718

OCLC:

700406615