Bits of Life: Feminism at the Intersections of Media, Bioscience, and Technology

Since World War II, the biological and technological have been fusing and merging in new ways, resulting in the loss of a clear distinction between the two. This entanglement of biology with technology isn't new, but the pervasiveness of that integration is staggering, as is the speed at which the two have been merging in recent decades. As this process permeates more of everyday life, the urgent necessity arises to rethink both biology and technology. Indeed, the human body can no longer be regarded either as a bounded entity or as a naturally given and distinct part of an unquestioned whole.

Bits of Life assumes a posthuman definition of the body. It is grounded in questions about today's biocultures, which pertain neither to humanist bodily integrity nor to the anthropological assumption that human bodies are the only ones that matter. Editors Anneke Smelik and Nina Lykke aid in mapping changes and transformations and in striking a middle road between the metaphor and the material. In exploring current reconfigurations of bodies and embodied subjects, the contributors pursue a technophilic, yet critical, path while articulating new and thoroughly appraised ethical standards.

Anneke Smelik is professor of visual culture at the Radboud University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Nina Lykke is professor of gender studies, Linkoeping University, Sweden, and head of the Nordic Research School in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies.

"Bits of Life is a strong and vibrant contribution to the field of feminist technoscience studies. The collection is constructed as an ongoing dialogue among a group of scholars who have been thinking about these issues for a long time. It is forceful and bold in its engagement with key questions about new technologies of bio-engineering, reproduction, imaging, communication, and the redefinition of 'life.'" - Lisa Parks, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

"A speedy, smart, provocative, hybrid assemblage of essays on contemporary technoscientific and mass(ively) mediated cultural transformations that is deeply invested in helping us think our way toward possible futures. The editors map the multiple intellectual and institutional histories informing the prolific imaginaries, and contested terrain, of feminist cultural studies of technoscience today." - Jackie Orr, Syracuse University