| Private Bodies, Public Texts: Race, Gender, and a Cultural Bioethics Contributor(s): Holloway, Karla Fc (Author) |
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ISBN: 0822349175 ISBN-13: 9780822349174 Publisher: Duke University Press OUR PRICE: $25.60 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: March 2011 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Medical | Ethics - Social Science | Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - Social Science | Women's Studies |
| Dewey: 174.209 |
| LCCN: 2010031784 |
| Physical Information: 0.7" H x 5.7" W x 8.1" (0.75 lbs) 256 pages |
| Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - African American - Sex & Gender - Feminine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In Private Bodies, Public Texts, Karla FC Holloway examines instances where medical issues and information that would usually be seen as intimate, private matters are forced into the public sphere. As she demonstrates, the resulting social dramas often play out on the bodies of women and African Americans. Holloway discusses the spectacle of the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case and the injustice of medical researchers' use of Henrietta Lacks's cell line without her or her family's knowledge or permission. She offers a provocative reading of the Tuskegee syphilis study and a haunting account of the ethical dilemmas that confronted physicians, patients, and families when a hospital became a space for dying rather than healing during Hurricane Katrina; even at that dire moment, race mattered. Private Bodies, Public Texts is a compelling call for a cultural bioethics that attends to the historical and social factors that render some populations more vulnerable than others in medical and legal contexts. Holloway proposes literature as a conceptual anchor for discussions of race, gender, bioethics, and the right to privacy. Literary narratives can accommodate thick description, multiple subjectivities, contradiction, and complexity. |