Body/Politics: Studies in Reproduction, Production, and (Re)Construction By Thomas C. Shevory. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000. 249p. $59.95.

Extract

Body/Politics is a well-researched book that brings together a significant range of topics to explicate the connections between changes occurring with the biological body and within body politics. The theoretical structure of the book is Marxist/feminist with heavy reliance on critical theory for Thomas Shevory's legal analysis in some of the chapters. According to the author, the central thesis of the book is that “the process of technological change will be creatively destructive, opening new avenues for equality, diversity, self-expression, resistance to hierarchy and control, while also offering new means for domination, exploitation, oppression, and dehumanization” (p. 3). He thus rejects the more extreme stances of the “technoprogressives” who see nothing but good and the “technophobes” who see nothing but bad coming from these developments. He argues quite convincingly that the historical processes we face through these technological changes are dialectical and thus subject to human political intervention. In other words, if we so choose, we do have the capacity to shape technologies, though it is far from clear that we now actually have the will to do so.