Conquest of Body
ebook ∣ Biopower with Biotechnology · SpringerBriefs in Philosophy
By Polona Tratnik
Sign up to save your library
With an OverDrive account, you can save your favorite libraries for at-a-glance information about availability. Find out more about OverDrive accounts.
Find this title in Libby, the library reading app by OverDrive.
Search for a digital library with this title
Title found at these libraries:
Loading... |
This book reflects on the phenomenon of biotechnology and how it affects the body and discusses a number of related issues, including visualization, mediation, and epistemology.
The author offers a compelling thesis, arguing that the exploration of the human body has one ultimate aim: to gain knowledge of it and to conquer it. Exploration of body has an intrinsic link to power, since knowledge is constitutive for the power over the body. Ultimately the conquest of body means the power to intervene into life processes.
The book breaks new ground with its study of body visualizations, from the Renaissance drawings to the medical imaging. In particular, it investigates their complex mediality. It also considers the extension and the reach of biopower that is now possible thanks to a wide range of engineering applications.
The author originally questions the research approach by rethinking the relationship between mental and sensual examination. She takes intoconsideration the epistemological problem of the two modes of exploration: obtaining knowledge from empirical exploration and projecting that knowledge to the object of exploration.