In Gut Feminism Elizabeth A. Wilson urges feminists to rethink their resistance to biological and pharmaceutical data. Turning her attention to the gut and depression, she asks what conceptual and methodological innovations become possible when feminist theory isn't so instinctively antibiological. She examines research on anti-depressants, placebos, transference, phantasy, eating disorders and suicidality with two goals in mind: to show how pharmaceutical data can be useful for feminist theory, and to address the necessary role of aggression in feminist politics. Gut Feminism's provocative challenge to feminist theory is that it would be more powerful if it could attend to biological data and tolerate its own capacity for harm.
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Gut Feminism
In Gut Feminism Elizabeth A. Wilson urges feminists to rethink their resistance to biological and pharmaceutical data. Turning her attention to the gut and depression, she asks what conceptual and methodological innovations become possible when feminist theory isn't so instinctively antibiological. She examines research on anti-depressants, placebos, transference, phantasy, eating disorders and suicidality with two goals in mind: to show how pharmaceutical data can be useful for feminist theory, and to address the necessary role of aggression in feminist politics. Gut Feminism's provocative challenge to feminist theory is that it would be more powerful if it could attend to biological data and tolerate its own capacity for harm.
In Gut Feminism Elizabeth A. Wilson urges feminists to rethink their resistance to biological and pharmaceutical data. Turning her attention to the gut and depression, she asks what conceptual and methodological innovations become possible when feminist theory isn't so instinctively antibiological. She examines research on anti-depressants, placebos, transference, phantasy, eating disorders and suicidality with two goals in mind: to show how pharmaceutical data can be useful for feminist theory, and to address the necessary role of aggression in feminist politics. Gut Feminism's provocative challenge to feminist theory is that it would be more powerful if it could attend to biological data and tolerate its own capacity for harm.
Elizabeth A. Wilson is Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University and the author of Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body, also published by Duke University Press.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Depression, Biology, Aggression 1 Part I. Feminist Theory 1. Underbelly 21 2. The Biolocial Unconscious 45 3. Bitter Melancholy 68 Part II. Antidepressants 4. Chemical Transference 97 5. The Bastard Placebo 121 6. The Pharmakology of Depression 141 Conclusion 169 Notes 181 References 201 Index 225
What People are Saying About This
Object Lessons - Robyn Wiegman
“Theoretically rigorous, critically astute, and absolutely engaging, Gut Feminism is a well-crafted, exquisitely written, and lively intervention into key debates in feminist theory. A major and important book."
Cruel Optimism - Lauren Berlant
"'There is still something about biology that remains troublesome for feminist theory,' writes Elizabeth Wilson, in Gut Feminism. This vigorous, rigorous, and riveting book not only asks what biology might do for feminist understandings of affect, illness, mood, and agency; it makes a searingly powerful case for an unashamed embrace of feminist aggression. A wonderful pedagogical experience."
