Bibliograph

Fantasies of identification, disability, gender, race, Ellen Samuels

Type

Label

Fantasies of identification, disability, gender, race, Ellen Samuels

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Fantasies of identification

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

863195403

Responsibility statement

Ellen Samuels

Series statement

Cultural front

Sub title

disability, gender, race

Summary

"In the mid-nineteenth-century United States, as it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between bodies understood as black, white, or Indian; able-bodied or disabled; and male or female, intense efforts emerged to define these identities as biologically distinct and scientifically verifiable in a literally marked body. Combining literary analysis, legal history, and visual culture, Ellen Samuels traces the evolution of the "fantasy of identification" - the powerful belief that embodied social identities are fixed, verifiable, and visible through modern science. From birthmarks and fingerprints to blood quantum and DNA, she examines how this fantasy has circulated between cultural representations, law, science, and policy to become one of the most powerfully institutionalized ideologies of modern society."--back cover

Table Of Contents

Ellen Craft's masquerade -- Confidence in the nineteenth century -- The disability con onscreen -- The trials of Salome Müller -- Of fiction and fingerprints -- Proving disability -- Revising blood quantum -- Realms of biocertification -- DNA and the readable self -- Conclusion: future identifications

Classification