The End of Normal : Identity in a Biocultural Era / Lennard J. Davis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davis, Lennard J., 1949- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sociology of disability.

Human body--Social aspects.

Human body.

Identity (Psychology).

Group identity.

Physical Description:

xi, 155 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, [Michigan] : The University of Michigan Press, [2013]

Summary:

"In an era when human lives are increasingly measured and weighed in relation to the medical and scientific, notions of what is "normal" have changed drastically. While it is no longer useful to think of a person's particular race, gender, sexual orientation, or choice as "normal," the concept continues to haunt us in other ways. In The End of Normal, Lennard J. Davis explores changing perceptions of body and mind in social, cultural, and political life as the 21st century unfolds. The book's provocative essays mine the worlds of advertising, film, literature, and the visual arts as they consider issues of disability, depression, physician-assisted suicide, medical diagnosis, transgender, and other identities. Using contemporary discussions of biopower and biopolitics, Davis focuses on social and cultural production--particularly on issues around the different body and mind. The End of Normal seeks an analysis that works comfortably in the intersection between science, medicine, technology, and culture, and will appeal to those interested in cultural studies, bodily practices, disability, science and medical studies, feminist materialism, psychiatry, and psychology"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1 The End of Normal 1

2 Dismodernism Reconsidered 15

3 Disability in the Media; or, Why Don't Disabled Actors Play Disabled Roles? 31

4 Depression and Disability 43

5 Stumped by Genes: DNA, Disability, and Prosthesis 68

6 Diagnosis: A Biocultural Critique of Certainty 82

7 A Disability Studies Case for Physician-Assisted Suicide 95

8 Transgendered Freud 108

9 The Biocultures Manifesto (cowritten with David Morris) 121

10 Biocultural Knowledge 129.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780472072026

0472072021

9780472052028

0472052020

OCLC:

844308398