Sibling Action : The Genealogical Structure of Modernity / Stefani Engelstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Engelstein, Stefani, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Identity (Philosophical concept).

Siblings--Miscellanea.

Relation (Philosophy).

Knowledge, Theory of.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (360 pages) : illustrations, graphs

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Columbia University Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

The sibling stands out as a ubiquitous-yet unacknowledged-conceptual touchstone across the European long nineteenth century. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, Europeans embarked on a new way of classifying the world, devising genealogies that determined degrees of relatedness by tracing heritage through common ancestry. This methodology organized historical systems into family trees in a wide array of new disciplines, transforming into siblings the closest contemporaneous terms on trees of languages, religions, races, nations, species, or individuals. In literature, a sudden proliferation of siblings-often incestuously inclined-negotiated this confluence of knowledge and identity. In all genealogical systems the sibling term, not quite same and not quite other, serves as an active fault line, necessary for and yet continuously destabilizing definition and classification.In her provocative book, Stefani Engelstein argues that this pervasive relational paradigm shaped the modern subject, life sciences, human sciences, and collective identities such as race, religion, and gender. The insecurity inherent to the sibling structure renders the systems it underwrites fluid. It therefore offers dynamic potential, but also provokes counterreactions such as isolationist theories of subjectivity, the political exclusion of sisters from fraternal equality, the tyranny of intertwined economic and kinship theories, conflicts over natural kinds and evolutionary speciation, and invidious anthropological and philological classifications of Islam and Judaism. Integrating close readings across the disciplines with panoramic intellectual history and arresting literary interpretations, Sibling Action presents a compelling new understanding of systems of knowledge and provides the foundation for less confrontational formulations of belonging, identity, and agency.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION: THE SIBLING AND MODERNITY

PART I. RECUPERATING THE SIBLING

1. SIBLING LOGIC

PART II. FRATERNITY AND REVOLUTION

2. THE SHADOWS OF FRATERNITY

3. ECONOMIZING DESIRE: THE SIBLING (IN) LAW

PART III. GENEALOGICAL SCIENCES

4. LIVING LANGUAGES: COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY AND EVOLUTION

5. THE EAST COMES HOME: RACE AND RELIGION

EPILOGUE: SPAWNING DISCIPLINES

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Mrz 2019)

ISBN:

9780231542715

0231542712

OCLC:

1014331512