The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets: A Reproductive History of the Nonhuman

Biopolitics and posthumanism have been passé theories in the academy for a while now, standing on the unfashionable side of the fault line between biology and liberal thought. These days, if people invoke them, they do so a bit apologetically. But, as Ruth Miller argues, we should not be so quick to relegate these terms to the scholarly dustbin. This is because they can help to explain an increasingly important (and contested) influence in modern democratic politics-that of nostalgia. Nostalgia is another somewhat embarrassing concept for the academy. It is that wistful sense of longing for an imaginary and unitary past that leads to an impossible future. And, moreover for this book, it is ordinarily considered "bad" for democracy. But, again, Miller says, not so fast. As she argues in this book, nostalgia is the mode of engagement with the world that allows thought and life to coexist, productively, within democratic politics. Miller demonstrates her theory by looking at nostalgia as a nonhuman mode of "thought" embedded in biopolitical reproduction. To put this another way, she looks at mass democracy as a classically nonhuman affair and nostalgic, nonhuman reproduction as the political activity that makes this democracy happen. To illustrate, Miller draws on the politics surrounding embryos and the modernization of the Turkish alphabet. Situating this argument in feminist theories of biopolitics, this unusual and erudite book demonstrates that nostalgia is not as detrimental to democratic engagement as scholars have claimed.

Politics & Social Sciences

Miller, Ruth A.

Women's Studies

Oxford University Press

Biopolitics and posthumanism have been passé theories in the academy for a while now, standing on the unfashionable side of the fault line between biology and liberal thought. These days, if people invoke them, they do so a bit apologetically. But, as Ruth Miller argues, we should not be so quick to relegate these terms to the scholarly dustbin. This is because they can help to explain an increasingly important (and contested) influence in modern democratic politics-that of nostalgia. Nostalgia is another somewhat embarrassing concept for the academy. It is that wistful sense of longing for an imaginary and unitary past that leads to an impossible future. And, moreover for this book, it is ordinarily considered "bad" for democracy. But, again, Miller says, not so fast. As she argues in this book, nostalgia is the mode of engagement with the world that allows thought and life to coexist, productively, within democratic politics. Miller demonstrates her theory by looking at nostalgia as a nonhuman mode of "thought" embedded in biopolitical reproduction. To put this another way, she looks at mass democracy as a classically nonhuman affair and nostalgic, nonhuman reproduction as the political activity that makes this democracy happen. To illustrate, Miller draws on the politics surrounding embryos and the modernization of the Turkish alphabet. Situating this argument in feminist theories of biopolitics, this unusual and erudite book demonstrates that nostalgia is not as detrimental to democratic engagement as scholars have claimed.

Legislating Authority: Sin and Crime in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey (Middle East Studies: History, Politics & Law)

Legislation Authority addresses issues of law, state violence, and state authority within the Ottoman and Turkish context.

Legislating Authority (Middle East Studies: History, Politics & Law)

Business & Money

Routledge

This volume argues that legislation on abortion, adultery, and rape has been central to the formation of the modern citizen. The author draws on rights literature, bio-political scholarship, and a gender-studies perspective as a foundation for rethinking the sovereign relationship. In approaching the politicization of reproductive space from this direction, the study resituates the role of rights and rights-granting within the sovereign relationship. A second theme running throughout the book explores the international implications of these arguments and addresses the role of abortion, adultery and rape legislation in constructing 'civilizational' relationships. In focusing on the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, France and Italy as case studies, Miller presents a discussion of what 'Europe' is, and the role of sexuality and reproduction in defining it.

The Limits of Bodily Integrity: Abortion, Adultery, and Rape Legislation in Comparative Perspective (Law, Justice and Power)

Foreign & International Law

The Erotics of Corruption: Law, Scandal, and Political Perversion

A provocative retelling of the story of political corruption in the modern period.

History

World

State University of New York Press

A provocative retelling of the story of political corruption in the modern period. In this provocative retelling of the story of political corruption in the modern period, Ruth A. Miller argues that narratives of political corruption rely upon an explicitly pornographic rhetoric and have been instrumental in carving out lawless or exceptional space. Drawing upon an extensive and wide-ranging literature, she examines corruption, the erotic, and legal exceptionalism as they appear in media representations of Saddam Hussein as “corrupt leader,” nineteenth-century political cartoons, Pier Pasolini’s film Salo, Ernst Kantorowicz’s theorization of the body politic, Giorgio Agamben’s analysis of biopolitics, and Achille Mbembe’s discussion of the postcolony. Miller comments on both the erotic nature of the state of exception and colonial or postcolonial manifestations of it, and presents a new voice in ongoing conversations about law, violence, and sexuality in the contemporary world.

Taking natural disaster as the political and legal norm is uncommon. Taking a person who has become unstable and irrational during a disaster as the starting point for legal analysis is equally uncommon. Nonetheless, in Law in Crisis Ruth Miller makes the unsettling case that the law demands an ecstatic subject and that natural disaster is the endpoint to law. Developing an idiosyncratic but compelling new theory of legal and political existence, Miller challenges existing arguments that, whether valedictory or critical, have posited the rational, bounded self as the normative subject of law. By bringing a distinctive, accessible reading of contemporary political philosophy to bear on source material in several European and Middle Eastern languages, Miller constructs a cogent analysis of natural disaster and its role in modern subject formation. In the process, she opens up exciting new lines of inquiry in the fields of law, politics, and gender studies. Law in Crisis represents a promising new development in the interdisciplinary study of law.

Law in Crisis: The Ecstatic Subject of Natural Disaster (The Cultural Lives of Law)

Stanford Law Books

The Limits of Bodily Integrity: Abortion, Adultery, and Rape Legislation in Comparative Perspective (Law, Justice, and Power)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Miller, Ruth A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Miller, Ruth A.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Miller, Ruth A.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets: A Reproductive History of the Nonhuman

The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets: A Reproductive History of the Nonhuman

Legislating Authority (Middle East Studies: History, Politics & Law)

The Limits of Bodily Integrity: Abortion, Adultery, and Rape Legislation in Comparative Perspective (Law, Justice and Power)

The Erotics of Corruption: Law, Scandal, and Political Perversion

The Erotics of Corruption: Law, Scandal, and Political Perversion

Law in Crisis: The Ecstatic Subject of Natural Disaster (The Cultural Lives of Law)

The Limits of Bodily Integrity: Abortion, Adultery, and Rape Legislation in Comparative Perspective (Law, Justice, and Power)