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A review by amkclaes
Par-delà les frontières du corps by Silvia Federici
3.0
This was a really middling analysis of the body in late capitalist neoliberal society - mostly American society.
The transphobia was latent and in some ways arguable, but present it was, and unnecessary at that - could have been my French translation (I had learned of this author from my professor at university in France, who incidentally wrote the preface of this French translation, and so I assumed the author was French... she is not) - but just to mention a tip of an iceberg, the wording of "men, women, and trans people" could have been retooled I feel, it's just a bit lazy for someone claiming to be a feminist scholar in 2020 in my opinion
But honestly as a whole the works lacked a lot of rigor, they were more like musings than real analysis, and made many affirmations without any citations or evidence even though they weren't really given.. for example she claims that "most children that are born today are neither wanted nor foreseen" - and in the next sentence goes onto explain how in countries with weak social security, children can be wanted for their function as insurance. Neither proposition is cited, and they are contradictory! These types of claims litter the work and weaken it.
The most I got from this was a really solid bibliography that I'm excited to dig into
And, honestly, I think as a sketch / debate starter on a lot of complex issues it's not a bad jumping off point. And as a rule if a book challenges me on some issues (IVF, in this one - I thought the class and race based analysis was illuminating and again put me on the path to some other readings I'm excited about, or even the analysis of body discipline in space) I feel like it's a decent work. It's also accessible in my opinion for how entrenched it is in complex, elite crit theory, so I give it points for that.
The transphobia was latent and in some ways arguable, but present it was, and unnecessary at that - could have been my French translation (I had learned of this author from my professor at university in France, who incidentally wrote the preface of this French translation, and so I assumed the author was French... she is not) - but just to mention a tip of an iceberg, the wording of "men, women, and trans people" could have been retooled I feel, it's just a bit lazy for someone claiming to be a feminist scholar in 2020 in my opinion
But honestly as a whole the works lacked a lot of rigor, they were more like musings than real analysis, and made many affirmations without any citations or evidence even though they weren't really given.. for example she claims that "most children that are born today are neither wanted nor foreseen" - and in the next sentence goes onto explain how in countries with weak social security, children can be wanted for their function as insurance. Neither proposition is cited, and they are contradictory! These types of claims litter the work and weaken it.
The most I got from this was a really solid bibliography that I'm excited to dig into
And, honestly, I think as a sketch / debate starter on a lot of complex issues it's not a bad jumping off point. And as a rule if a book challenges me on some issues (IVF, in this one - I thought the class and race based analysis was illuminating and again put me on the path to some other readings I'm excited about, or even the analysis of body discipline in space) I feel like it's a decent work. It's also accessible in my opinion for how entrenched it is in complex, elite crit theory, so I give it points for that.