In Undoing Monogamy Angela Willey offers a radically interdisciplinary exploration of the concept of monogamy in U.S. science and culture, propelled by queer feminist desires for new modes of conceptualization and new forms of belonging. She approaches the politics and materiality of monogamy as intertwined with one another such that disciplinary ways of knowing themselves become an object of critical inquiry. Refusing to answer the naturalization of monogamy with a naturalization of nonmonogamy, Willey demands a critical reorientation toward the monogamy question in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The book examines colonial sexual science, monogamous voles, polyamory, and the work of Alison Bechdel and Audre Lorde to show how challenging the lens through which human nature is seen as monogamous or nonmonogamous forces us to reconsider our investments in coupling and in disciplinary notions of biological bodies.
Reviews and Endorsements: "Reaching far into feminist science studies, new materialism, and feminist of color critique, Angela Willey refuses to privilege either biology or the social. Her deepest ethic is to recognize the animacy of both humans and nonhumans, of both culture and materiality, and the ways in which they make one another. An outstanding book, Undoing Monogamy opens up important questions for defining feminist science and its promise for democratizing science and society." — Kim TallBear, author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science "Angela Willey's Undoing Monogamy explores the rich terrain of speculation over the meaning and significance of monogamy for scientists, for advocates of polyamory, and for feminists. Covering a substantial range of topics, Undoing Monogamy is a highly generative book for anyone interested in feminist science studies, cultural studies of sexuality, and especially new materialism." — Jennifer Terry, author of An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society Contents: Acknowledgments xi Introduction. Politics and Possibility: A Queer Feminist Introduction to Monogamy 1 1. Monogamy's Nature: Colonial Sexual Science and Its Naturecultural Fruits 25 2. Making the Monogamous Human: Mating, Measurement, and the New Science of Bonding 45 3. Making Our Poly Nature: Monogamy's Inversion and the Reproduction of Difference 73 4. Rethinking Monogamy's Nature: From the Truth of Non/Monogamy to a Dyke Ethics of "Antimonogamy" 95 5. Biopossibility: Molecular Monogamy and Audre Lorde's Erotic 121 Epilogue. Dreams of a Dyke Science 141 Notes 147 Bibliography 169 Index 191 About the Author: Angela Willey is Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
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