Intact

For readers of INVISIBLE WOMEN, Audre Lorde, Susan Sontag and books about health and politics like OUR BODIES OURSELVES>

Autorentext
Clare Chambers is Professor of Political Philosophy and a Fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge. The author of the acclaimed Against Marriage, she specializes in feminism, bioethics, contemporary liberalism and theories of social justice.

Zusammenfassung

In this thought-provoking, original work, acclaimed political philosopher Clare Chambers argues that the unmodified body is a key political principle. While defending individuals' right to change their bodies, she argues that the social pressures to modify undermine equality. She shows how the connected ideas of the natural body, the normal body, and the whole body have been used both to disrupt and to maintain social hierarchies - sometimes oppressing, other times liberating. The body becomes a site of political importance: a place where hierarchies of sex, gender, race, disability, age, and class are reinforced.

Through a clear-sighted analysis of the power dynamics that structure our society, and with examples ranging widely from bodybuilding to breast implants, deafness to male circumcision, biology to gender identity, Intact stresses that we must break away from the oppressive forces that demand we alter our bodies. Instead, it offers a bold, transformative vision of the human body that is equal without expectation.