{"product_id":"performance-all-the-way-down-9780226771755","title":"Performance All the Way Down","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn award-winning biologist and writer applies queer feminist theory to developmental genetics, arguing that individuals are not essentially male or female.   The idea that gender is a performancea tenet of queer feminist theory since the ninetieshas spread from college classrooms to popular culture. This transformative concept has sparked reappraisals of social expectations as well as debate over not just gender, but sex: what it is, what it means, and how we know it. Most scientific and biomedical research over the past seventy years has assumed and reinforced a binary concept of biological sex, though some scientists point out that male and female are just two outcomes in a world rich in sexual diversity.   In Performance All the Way Down, MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize finalist Richard O. Prum brings feminist thought into conversation with biology, arguing that the sexual binary is not essential to human genes, chromosomes, or embryos. Our genomes are not blueprints, algorithms\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Readers of [Prum’s] earlier work, including his 2017 book, \u003ci\u003eThe Evolution of Beauty\u003c\/i\u003e, will find themselves intrigued by his continued engagement with feminist science studies—and he has done his homework. . . . \u003ci\u003ePerformance All the Way Down\u003c\/i\u003e contains a lot of big ideas, both because of the biological content Prum strives to convey to his readers and because of the sophisticated nature of the feminist theory he mobilizes. . . . To understand the full scope of Prum’s vision, I encourage you to read it in full.” * Science *\u003cbr\u003e“Prum offers a meticulous tour of the molecular pathways that underlie stereotypical sex­ual development in humans, as well as the myriad ways that any individual person’s development might differ. . . . If you read \u003ci\u003ePerformance All the Way Down\u003c\/i\u003e, you’ll be presented with an abun­dance of interesting stories drawn from developmental biology, ecology, cultural anthropology, and more. My own copy is replete with dog-eared pages that had information I’m excited to think more about.” * American Biology Teacher *\u003cbr\u003e“A renowned biologist meets queer theory, and creativity takes flight. A joyful and expansive celebration of the complexity and contingency of sex.” -- Sarah S. Richardson, Harvard University\u003cbr\u003e“A powerful appeal for an intersectional rethinking of the science, materiality, and culture of human sex, \u003ci\u003ePerformance All the Way Down \u003c\/i\u003eundoes the scientific justifications for categories of a sex and gender binary that have contributed scientific support to sexual oppression. Discussing biology, queer theory, and feminism together—in a shared vocabulary—Prum successfully expands intellectual space for queer feminist analysis and research within genetics, evolutionary biology, and developmental biology. This book will be discussed across the humanities, social sciences, and hard sciences for years to come.” -- David A. Rubin, University of South Florida\u003cbr\u003e“An ambitious, deeply interdisciplinary, and profound effort to grapple with the biological meanings of ‘sex.’ Prum tackles a set of crucial questions in a rigorous, thoughtful, and playful way, with implications that open up a landscape of transformative possibilities for the consideration of sex in biological research and scholarship.” -- Stacey A. Ritz, McMaster University\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eList of Illustrations\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Prologue  Taking Birds Seriously  A Humanistic Turn\u003cbr\u003e An Ornithologist for Intersectionality\u003cbr\u003e    1. Performance All the Way Down  Material Feminisms\u003cbr\u003e A Performative Continuum\u003cbr\u003e What Is the Role of Metaphor in Biology?\u003cbr\u003e What Is at Stake?\u003cbr\u003e The Stakes for Evolutionary Biology\u003cbr\u003e Mind the Gap\u003cbr\u003e Why Queer Biology?\u003cbr\u003e Where Are We Going?\u003cbr\u003e    2. Critical Concepts  What Are Male and Female?\u003cbr\u003e Historical Ontology\u003cbr\u003e Sex Is a History\u003cbr\u003e Sex Difference versus Sexual Difference\u003cbr\u003e Sex and Race\u003cbr\u003e Sexual Development and Differentiation\u003cbr\u003e The Sexual Phenotype\u003cbr\u003e Sex Determination and Sex Reversal\u003cbr\u003e Discourse\u003cbr\u003e Agency\u003cbr\u003e Queer and Queering\u003cbr\u003e    3. Gender Performativity  What Is Performativity?\u003cbr\u003e Elements of Performativity\u003cbr\u003e Performativity and Trans Experience\u003cbr\u003e Between Butler and Barad\u003cbr\u003e    4. The Enactment of the Biological Self  Genes and Development\u003cbr\u003e What Is Molecular Discourse?\u003cbr\u003e Want to Go to the Movies on Friday?\u003cbr\u003e How Discourse Becomes Genetic Action within Cells\u003cbr\u003e The Choreography of Gene Expression\u003cbr\u003e The Performative Phenotypic Landscape\u003cbr\u003e Canonical versus Performative Pathways\u003cbr\u003e How Does the Body Regulate Growth over Space?\u003cbr\u003e What Is the Role of Physical Forces in Development?\u003cbr\u003e Performativity of Cellular Discourse\u003cbr\u003e Are Genes Causes?\u003cbr\u003e Agency in Developmental Biology\u003cbr\u003e Citationality and Homology\u003cbr\u003e Posthuman Power\u003cbr\u003e Physiology and Immunity\u003cbr\u003e Neurobiology and Psychology\u003cbr\u003e Sexual Selection\u003cbr\u003e What Is Not Performative in Biology?\u003cbr\u003e Why Performative Biology Now?\u003cbr\u003e    5. How Do Our Sexual Bodies Develop?  The Role of Chromosomes\u003cbr\u003e On Gene Nomenclature\u003cbr\u003e How Do Gonads Differentiate?\u003cbr\u003e Reproductive Tract Development\u003cbr\u003e Genital Development\u003cbr\u003e Post-embryonic Sexual Development\u003cbr\u003e Sexual Development Summary\u003cbr\u003e    6. Variations in Our Sexual Development  Terminology and the Framing of Embodied Sexual Variation\u003cbr\u003e Moving beyond Pathology\u003cbr\u003e Chromosomal Contributions to Differences in Sexual Development\u003cbr\u003e Genetic Variations in Gonad Development\u003cbr\u003e X Chromosome Inactivation\u003cbr\u003e Genital and Reproductive Tract Development\u003cbr\u003e Noncoding Genetic Variation\u003cbr\u003e How Does the Environment Affect Sexual Development?\u003cbr\u003e Queer Science\u003cbr\u003e    7. How Evolution Generates Sexual Variability  The Evolution of Sex\u003cbr\u003e Evolutionary Variability of Sexual Development Initiation\u003cbr\u003e Why Sexual Differentiation Mechanisms Are Generatively Queering\u003cbr\u003e Sexually Disruptive Selection\u003cbr\u003e Evolution of the Molecular Discourse of Sexual Development\u003cbr\u003e Evolution of Sexual Transition\u003cbr\u003e Evolution Is Incompatible with Sexual Essences\u003cbr\u003e Norms and Innovation\u003cbr\u003e Placental Performativity\u003cbr\u003e Limits of the Binary Bottleneck\u003cbr\u003e    8. The Future of Performative Biology  Performative Scientific Hypotheses\u003cbr\u003e Performativity of Illness and Disability\u003cbr\u003e Recalibrating Causality\u003cbr\u003e Biology Is Ready to Think Performatively\u003cbr\u003e Pluralism and the Phenotype\u003cbr\u003e What Is Evolutionary Biology About?\u003cbr\u003e    9. Performance All the Way Up  Sexual Reproduction Is an Intra-action\u003cbr\u003e A Posthuman Genealogy of Performative Discourse\u003cbr\u003e Is There Gender in Nature?\u003cbr\u003e “What Is Sex?” Revisited\u003cbr\u003e Toward a Scientific\/Cultural Concept of Gender\/Sex\u003cbr\u003e Performative Perspectives on Transsexual Experience\u003cbr\u003e Sex and Race as Scientific Apparatuses\u003cbr\u003e Sex and Race Categories in Biomedical Research\u003cbr\u003e Post-disciplinary Material Feminisms\u003cbr\u003e An Intellectually Queer Space in Science\u003cbr\u003e    Acknowledgments\u003cbr\u003e Appendixes  Appendix 1. Material Feminisms\u003cbr\u003e Appendix 2. Acquired Immunity\u003cbr\u003e Appendix 3. Current Models of the Genotype-Phenotype Relationship\u003cbr\u003e Appendix 4. Modularity\u003cbr\u003e Appendix 5. Genetic Assimilation\u003cbr\u003e Appendix 6. Why Gene-Level Selection Is Insufficient\u003cbr\u003e Appendix 7. Internal Selection  Notes\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography\u003cbr\u003e Index","brand":"The University of Chicago Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49400115200343,"sku":"9780226771755","price":76.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/performance-all-the-way-down-9780226771755","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}