{"product_id":"a-body-worth-defending-9780822345350","title":"A Body Worth Defending","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA science studies text that reveals the legal and political origins of the concept of immunity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ed Cohen offers a provocative and demanding account of what he calls the ‘back story’ of the apotheosis of the modern body through the thought provoking trajectory of immunity as an unquestioned metaphor that unreflectively incorporates juridico-political assumptions. . . . \u003ci\u003eA Body Worth Defending \u003c\/i\u003ehas much to offer the diligent reader, who is interested in tracing modernity’s genealogy and its shape-shifting over time in its understanding of the nature of the human and its present manifestation as a biological phenomena separated and distinct from the environment. ” - C. F. Black, \u003ci\u003eLeonardo\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[W]ith a decisive reading of Foucault, a well-researched insight into contemporary biopolitics and immunity, both philosophically and scientifically, and an historical genealogy of these topics that has no current rival, there is little doubt this work will have longstanding status.”\u003cbr\u003e - Elliot A. Jarbe, \u003ci\u003eFoucault Studies\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eA Body Worth Defending\u003c\/i\u003e presents an erudite analysis of immunity that elucidates complex theoretical ideas through the patient weaving of historical narrative. Cohen’s text, which in itself constitutes a fascinating historical study, presents a strong, well supported case for how politics insinuates itself into the fabric of our being. This persuasive and timely critique makes an important contribution to political and philosophical engagements with immunology, and to histories of medicine more generally.” - Michelle Jamieson, \u003ci\u003eSocial History of Medicine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ed Cohen’s \u003ci\u003eA Body Worth Defending\u003c\/i\u003e provides an excellent example of the latter genre. . . . Cohen’s sociopolitical history brilliantly navigates through various nineteenth-century interfaces of the medical and the political domains. . . . \u003ci\u003eA Body Worth Defending\u003c\/i\u003e reinforces the importance of the idea of immunity to elucidate notions of personal identity in advanced Western societies.” - Alfred J. Tauber, \u003ci\u003eIsis\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“For those inclined to Foucauldian approaches—and I include myself here—it is a most welcome and thorough study that pushes the Foucauldian corpus further, conceptually and substantively. . . . [T]his book is unsurpassed.” - Alison Bashford, \u003ci\u003eMetascience\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Inspired by Michel Foucault’s writings about biopolitics and biopower, Cohen traces immunity’s migration from politics and law into the domains of medicine and science. Offering a genealogy of the concept, he illuminates a complex of thinking about modern bodies which percolates through European political, legal, philosophical, economic, governmental, scientific, and medical discourses from the mid-seventeenth century through the twentieth. . . . In this lively cultural rumination, Cohen argues that by embracing the idea of immunity-as-defense so exclusively, biomedicine naturalizes the individual as the privileged focus for identifying and treating illness, thereby devaluing or obscuring approaches to healing situated within communities or collectives.” - Nelson Santos, \u003ci\u003eVisualAIDS \u003c\/i\u003eBlog\u003cbr\u003e“Ed Cohen provides a breathtakingly original exploration of the ways in which the immunity, a concept defined and complicated through the strange interlocking of biological and medical with legal and political discourses, has come to explain modern bodies, both individual and collective. A brilliant, timely contribution to understanding the biopolitics of illness, contagion and defense.”—\u003cb\u003eElizabeth Grosz\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution and the Untimely\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ed Cohen’s original epistemological history sheds new light on the taken for granted modern imperative to care for our health by tending our immune systems. This important book reveals in startling and fresh ways the philosophical groundings that made this imperative seem natural.”—\u003cb\u003eEmily Martin\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eFlexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture from the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eA Body Worth Defending\u003c\/i\u003e presents an erudite analysis of immunity that elucidates complex theoretical ideas through the patient weaving of historical narrative. Cohen’s text, which in itself constitutes a fascinating historical study, presents a strong, well supported case for how politics insinuates itself into the fabric of our being. This persuasive and timely critique makes an important contribution to political and philosophical engagements with immunology, and to histories of medicine more generally.” -- Michelle Jamieson * Social History of Medicine *\u003cbr\u003e“[W]ith a decisive reading of Foucault, a well-researched insight into contemporary biopolitics and immunity, both philosophically and scientifically, and an historical genealogy of these topics that has no current rival, there is little doubt this work will have longstanding status.”\u003cbr\u003e -- Elliot A. Jarbe * Foucault Studies *\u003cbr\u003e“Ed Cohen offers a provocative and demanding account of what he calls the ‘back story’ of the apotheosis of the modern body through the thought provoking trajectory of immunity as an unquestioned metaphor that unreflectively incorporates juridico-political assumptions. . . . \u003ci\u003eA Body Worth Defending \u003c\/i\u003ehas much to offer the diligent reader, who is interested in tracing modernity’s genealogy and its shape-shifting over time in its understanding of the nature of the human and its present manifestation as a biological phenomena separated and distinct from the environment. ” -- C. F. Black * Leonardo Reviews *\u003cbr\u003e“Ed Cohen’s \u003ci\u003eA Body Worth Defending\u003c\/i\u003e provides an excellent example of the latter genre. . . . Cohen’s sociopolitical history brilliantly navigates through various nineteenth-century interfaces of the medical and the political domains. . . . \u003ci\u003eA Body Worth Defending\u003c\/i\u003e reinforces the importance of the idea of immunity to elucidate notions of personal identity in advanced Western societies.” -- Alfred J. Tauber * Isis *\u003cbr\u003e“For those inclined to Foucauldian approaches—and I include myself here—it is a most welcome and thorough study that pushes the Foucauldian corpus further, conceptually and substantively. . . . [T]his book is unsurpassed.” -- Alison Bashford * Metascience *\u003cbr\u003e“Inspired by Michel Foucault’s writings about biopolitics and biopower, Cohen traces immunity’s migration from politics and law into the domains of medicine and science. Offering a genealogy of the concept, he illuminates a complex of thinking about modern bodies which percolates through European political, legal, philosophical, economic, governmental, scientific, and medical discourses from the mid-seventeenth century through the twentieth. . . . In this lively cultural rumination, Cohen argues that by embracing the idea of immunity-as-defense so exclusively, biomedicine naturalizes the individual as the privileged focus for identifying and treating illness, thereby devaluing or obscuring approaches to healing situated within communities or collectives.” -- Nelson Santos * VisualAIDS Blog *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments ix\u003cbr\u003e Opening Up a Few Concepts: Introductory Ruminations 1\u003cbr\u003e 1. Living Before and Beyond the Law, or A Reasonable Organism Defends Itself 32\u003cbr\u003e 2. A Body Worth Having, or A System of Natural Governance 68\u003cbr\u003e 3. A Policy called Milieu, or The Human Organism's Vital Space 130\u003cbr\u003e 4. Incorporating Immunity, or The Defensive Poetics of Modern Medicine 206\u003cbr\u003e Conclusion: Immune Communities, Common Immunities 269\u003cbr\u003e Notes 283\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography 323\u003cbr\u003e Index 359","brand":"Duke University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49406056464727,"sku":"9780822345350","price":27.9,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780822345350.jpg?v=1730494383","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/a-body-worth-defending-9780822345350","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}