Bodily Fluids, Fluid Bodies and International Politics: Feminist Technoscience, Biopolitics and Security

by Jenn Hobbs

Overview

In recent years, security actors have become increasingly concerned with health issues. This book reveals how understandings of race, sexuality and gender are produced/reproduced through healthcare policy.

Analysing the plasma of paid Mexicana/o donors in the US, airport vomit in Ebola epidemics and the semen of soldiers with genitourinary injuries, this book shows how security practices focus upon governing bodily fluids.

Using a variety of critical scholarship – feminist technoscience, queer studies and critical race studies – this book uses fluids to reveal unequal distributions of life and death.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781529237955
Publisher:	Bristol University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2025
Series:	Gender, Sexuality and Global Politics
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	172
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jenn Hobbs is Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Leicester.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Theorizing Assemblages and Feminist Technoscience

3. Life-giving, Life-threatening: Plasma Donation at the U.S.–Mexico Border

4. Racializing Fluids: Vomit, Airports and the 2013–16 Ebola Pandemic

5. Securing Cisheterosexuality: Semen and Genitourinary Injuries

6. Finding, Following, Fluids

7. Concluding is the Wrong Verb

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This book embodies the very best of what a queerfeminist curiosity has to offer global politics – unlikely sites and subjects of biopolitical (in)security and how they are inflected through and rub against race, gender and sexuality. By following bodily fluids – plasma, vomit and semen – the book takes the reader on a slippery ride through the messy assemblages of security practices to creatively meditate on what this means for the entangled distribution of life and death in the everyday. A must-read for students and scholars interested in subverting the discipline and creatively thinking otherwise.” Cristina Masters, University of Manchester

Editorial Reviews

This book embodies the very best of what a queerfeminist curiosity has to offer global politics – unlikely sites and subjects of biopolitical (in)security and how they are inflected through and rub against race, gender and sexuality. By following bodily fluids – plasma, vomit and semen – the book takes the reader on a slippery ride through the messy assemblages of security practices to creatively meditate on what this means for the entangled distribution of life and death in the everyday. A must-read for students and scholars interested in subverting the discipline and creatively thinking otherwise.” Cristina Masters, University of Manchester

From the Publisher