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Enlightenment Biopolitics William Max Nelson

Enlightenment Biopolitics By William Max Nelson

Enlightenment Biopolitics by William Max Nelson


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Enlightenment Biopolitics Summary

Enlightenment Biopolitics: A History of Race, Eugenics, and the Making of Citizens by William Max Nelson

A wide-ranging history tracing the birth of biopolitics in Enlightenment thought and its aftermath.

In Enlightenment Biopolitics, historian William Max Nelson pursues the ambitious task of tracing the context in which biopolitical thought emerged and circulated. He locates that context in the Enlightenment when emancipatory ideals sat alongside the horrors of colonialism, slavery, and race-based discrimination. In fact, these did not just coexist, Nelson argues; they were actually mutually constitutive of Enlightenment ideals.

In this book, Nelson focuses on Enlightenment-era visions of eugenics (including proposals to establish programs of selective breeding), forms of penal slavery, and spurious biological arguments about the supposed inferiority of particular groups. The Enlightenment, he shows, was rife with efforts to shape, harness, and organize the minds and especially the bodies of subjects and citizens. In his reading of the birth of biopolitics and its transformations, Nelson examines the shocking conceptual and practical connections between inclusion and exclusion, equality and inequality, rights and race, and the supposed improvement of the human species and practices of dehumanization.

Enlightenment Biopolitics Reviews

This is a highly original study that breaks new ground and discusses fundamental issues in Enlightenment history, political theory, and biopolitics. With flawless scholarship and an extraordinary mastery of the many relevant controversies and debates of the time, Nelson fills a major gap in our knowledge of the Enlightenment. This book makes important contributions to Enlightenment scholarship and will compel us to rethink the balance between equality and inequality, as well as between inclusion and exclusion, in Enlightenment social and political thought. * Siep Stuurman, author of The Invention of Humanity: Equality and Cultural Difference in World History *
Enlightenment Biopolitics is a well-crafted book that intervenes in an important period using little-known documents. In this innovative work, Nelson offers a creative riposte to the canonical debate about social contract theory in the French eighteenth century and its echoes in modern discourse. Striking an impressive balance between shocking materials on human breeding and highly contextual readings of their implications, this book is a subtle and elegant contribution to the history of the French Enlightenment and French Revolution. * Mackenzie Cooley, author of The Perfection of Nature: Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance *

About William Max Nelson

William Max Nelson is associate professor of history at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Time of Enlightenment: Constructing the Future in France, 1750 to Year Oneand a coeditor of The French Revolution in Global Perspective.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction: Becoming Biopolitics
Chapter One: Organizing the Swarm of Being
Chapter Two: Enlightenment Eugenics
Chapter Three: Making Men in the Colonies
Chapter Four: In Society, but Not of It
Chapter Five: New Citizens, New Slaves
Chapter Six: Making the New Man
Chapter Seven: An Evolving Constellation
Conclusion

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Index

Additional information

NGR9780226825588
9780226825588
0226825582
Enlightenment Biopolitics: A History of Race, Eugenics, and the Making of Citizens by William Max Nelson
New
Paperback
The University of Chicago Press
2024-05-06
336
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
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