Undoing Monogamy: The Politics of Science and the Possibilities of Biology

by Angela Willey

Overview

In Undoing Monogamy Angela Willey offers a radically interdisciplinary exploration of the concept of monogamy in U.S. science and culture, propelled by queer feminist desires for new modes of conceptualization and new forms of belonging. She approaches the politics and materiality of monogamy as intertwined with one another such that disciplinary ways of knowing themselves become an object of critical inquiry. Refusing to answer the naturalization of monogamy with a naturalization of nonmonogamy, Willey demands a critical reorientation toward the monogamy question in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The book examines colonial sexual science, monogamous voles, polyamory, and the work of Alison Bechdel and Audre Lorde to show how challenging the lens through which human nature is seen as monogamous or nonmonogamous forces us to reconsider our investments in coupling and in disciplinary notions of biological bodies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822361596
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	05/13/2016
Pages:	210
Sales rank:	791,729
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Angela Willey is Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  xi

Introduction. Politics and Possibility: A Queer Feminist Introduction to Monogamy  1

1. Monogamy's Nature: Colonial Sexual Science and Its Naturecultural Fruits  25

2. Making the Monogamous Human: Mating, Measurement, and the New Science of Bonding  45

3. Making Our Poly Nature: Monogamy's Inversion and the Reproduction of Difference  73

4. Rethinking Monogamy's Nature: From the Truth of Non/Monogamy to a Dyke Ethics of "Antimonogamy"  95

5. Biopossibility: Molecular Monogamy and Audre Lorde's Erotic  121

Epilogue. Dreams of a Dyke Science  141

Notes  147

Bibliography  169

Index  191

What People are Saying About This

Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science - Kim TallBear

"Reaching far into feminist science studies, new materialism, and feminist of color critique, Angela Willey refuses to privilege either biology or the social. Her deepest ethic is to recognize the animacy of both humans and nonhumans, of both culture and materiality, and the ways in which they make one another. An outstanding book, Undoing Monogamy opens up important questions for defining feminist science and its promise for democratizing science and society."

An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society - Jennifer Terry

"Angela Willey's Undoing Monogamy explores the rich terrain of speculation over the meaning and significance of monogamy for scientists, for advocates of polyamory, and for feminists. Covering a substantial range of topics, Undoing Monogamy is a highly generative book for anyone interested in feminist science studies, cultural studies of sexuality, and especially new materialism."

Editorial Reviews

"Undoing Monogamy is an important contribution to feminist and queer studies of science, to feminist materialisms, and to academic studies of non/monogamy.... Undoing Monogamy provides us with an example of how to approach science differently in ways that are grounded more in the lives and needs of a wider variety of diverse humans and nonhumans."--Kim TallBear "Hypatia" (4/1/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"Undoing Monogamy makes a key theoretical intervention: clarifying ow new materialist approaches can build on, rather than depart from (or at worst, ignore), the insights of feminist science studies. Angela Willey makes a necessary and pointed contribution. . . . This is a scholar to watch for self-reflexive, multidisciplinary, and intersectional feminist research that challenges us all to conceive of critique and world-building as compatible projects."--Kyla Schuller "Catalyst" (3/1/2019 12:00:00 AM)

"[Undoing Monogamy] has something to teach everyone: every reader will find something new and unfamiliar in its pages."--Clare Chambers "International Feminist Journal of Politics" (5/23/2017 12:00:00 AM)

"A richly interdisciplinary book . . . that demonstrates a facility and ease with multiple approaches in feminist science studies. . . . Willey's really substantive contribution to queer theory and sexuality studies, which is that the idea of monogamy and nonmonogamy as sexual practices--as sex itself--has been obscuring something of value: the expansive social worlds that might emerge if both monogamy and its others were critiqued."--Kyla Tompkins "American Quarterly" (1/12/2018 12:00:00 AM)

"The thoroughly interdisciplinary methodology, alongside ethical and joyful visions of a 'dyke science, ' give us all a new way forward, where we do not make easy scapegoats of disciplines, but interrogate and integrate our various disciplines through our deeply naturecultural worlds."--Banu Subramaniam "Science, Technology and Society" (4/30/2018 12:00:00 AM)

"The value of Undoing Monogamy to scholars of non/monogamy is unquestionable. The careful, historical attention to the way that non/monogamy has been implicated in colonial logics and ongoing projects of racism is a vital contribution to the field."--Jessica Kean "Australian Feminist Studies" (12/1/2016 12:00:00 AM)

From the Publisher

"A richly interdisciplinary book . . . that demonstrates a facility and ease with multiple approaches in feminist science studies. . . . Willey’s really substantive contribution to queer theory and sexuality studies, which is that the idea of monogamy and nonmonogamy as sexual practices—as sex itself—has been obscuring something of value: the expansive social worlds that might emerge if both monogamy and its others were critiqued."

American Quarterly - Kyla Tompkins

"[Undoing Monogamy] has something to teach everyone: every reader will find something new and unfamiliar in its pages."

International Feminist Journal of Politics - Clare Chambers

"Undoing Monogamy makes a key theoretical intervention: clarifying ow new materialist approaches can build on, rather than depart from (or at worst, ignore), the insights of feminist science studies. Angela Willey makes a necessary and pointed contribution. . . . This is a scholar to watch for self-reflexive, multidisciplinary, and intersectional feminist research that challenges us all to conceive of critique and world-building as compatible projects."

Catalyst - Kyla Schuller

"The thoroughly interdisciplinary methodology, alongside ethical and joyful visions of a ‘dyke science,’ give us all a new way forward, where we do not make easy scapegoats of disciplines, but interrogate and integrate our various disciplines through our deeply naturecultural worlds."

Science, Technology and Society - Banu Subramaniam

"Undoing Monogamy is an important contribution to feminist and queer studies of science, to feminist materialisms, and to academic studies of non/monogamy.... Undoing Monogamy provides us with an example of how to approach science differently in ways that are grounded more in the lives and needs of a wider variety of diverse humans and nonhumans."

Hypatia - Kim TallBear

"The value of Undoing Monogamy to scholars of non/monogamy is unquestionable. The careful, historical attention to the way that non/monogamy has been implicated in colonial logics and ongoing projects of racism is a vital contribution to the field."

Australian Feminist Studies - Jessica Kean

"Angela Willey's Undoing Monogamy explores the rich terrain of speculation over the meaning and significance of monogamy for scientists, for advocates of polyamory, and for feminists. Covering a substantial range of topics, Undoing Monogamy is a highly generative book for anyone interested in feminist science studies, cultural studies of sexuality, and especially new materialism."

An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society - Jennifer Terry