Freak Inheritance
Eugenics and Extraordinary Bodies in Performance
Published on 27. September 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
352 pages
978-0-19-769113-7 (ISBN)
Description
The long-awaited follow-up to Garland-Thomson's field-defining book Freakery, Freak Inheritance illuminates the convergence of the freak show era with the eugenics era, explicating the cultural work of the freak show as a compelling range of performances of cultural and social Others that emerge as eugenic targets from the late 19th century into the 20th century and beyond.
This book explores the wildly popular performances that told compelling stories about categories of people that scientific and social-scientific discourses increasingly described - and sometimes still describe - as biologically inferior. Although much work has emerged recently about the history of eugenics, this collection highlights the specific ways that modes of exaggerated commercial popular performances create a public conversation that mirrors pathological narratives of human difference that are now firmly established as the categories of normal and abnormal, healthy and diseased, beneficial and harmful. This connection between narratives of freakery and normalcy gesture towards a fuller understanding of how eugenic thinking has re-emerged strongly as a force in medical science and cultural thinking aimed at producing the supposed "best" and "most useful" kinds of people.
This book explores the wildly popular performances that told compelling stories about categories of people that scientific and social-scientific discourses increasingly described - and sometimes still describe - as biologically inferior. Although much work has emerged recently about the history of eugenics, this collection highlights the specific ways that modes of exaggerated commercial popular performances create a public conversation that mirrors pathological narratives of human difference that are now firmly established as the categories of normal and abnormal, healthy and diseased, beneficial and harmful. This connection between narratives of freakery and normalcy gesture towards a fuller understanding of how eugenic thinking has re-emerged strongly as a force in medical science and cultural thinking aimed at producing the supposed "best" and "most useful" kinds of people.
Reviews / Votes
legacy of 'freaks,' those whose bodies do not conform to the cultural norms that define appearance and social value. Both an overview of eugenics, which aims to normalize and regulate bodies and their range of performances, and forms of morphological resistance to eugenics, this is an original and forceful collection on the capacities of extraordinary bodies for creation and defiance, and the external forms of constraint and containment that regulate many of them. Bodies resist what we make of them - they are what they become, whether we understand or identify with them or not. This book addresses such resistance as much as it does this containment." * Elizabeth Grosz, author of The Incorporeal: Ontology, Ethics and the Limits of Materialism *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
47 b&w halftones
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
506 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-769113-7 (9780197691137)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson | Michael Mark Chemers | Analola Santana
Freak Inheritance
Eugenics and Extraordinary Bodies in Performance
E-Book
08/2024
OUP eBook
€24.99
Available for download
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson | Michael Mark Chemers | Analola Santana
Freak Inheritance
Eugenics and Extraordinary Bodies in Performance
E-Book
08/2024
OUP eBook
€24.99
Available for download
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson | Michael Mark Chemers | Analola Santana
Freak Inheritance
Eugenics and Extraordinary Bodies in Performance
Book
06/2024
Oxford University Press Inc
€100.28
Shipment within 15-20 days
Persons
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson is Professor Emerita at Emory University.
Michael Mark Chemers is Professor and Chair, Department of Performance, Play and Design, at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Analola Santana is Associate Professor, Department of Theatre, Dartmouth College.
Michael Mark Chemers is Professor and Chair, Department of Performance, Play and Design, at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Analola Santana is Associate Professor, Department of Theatre, Dartmouth College.
Content
FOREWORD by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen INTRODUCTION: <"Step Right Up! A New Introduction to the Old Freak Show> " by Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Michael Mark Chemers, and Analola Santana I. STAGING 1. <"Abject Bodies in Performance Art> " by Josefina Alcazar. Translated by Analola Santana
2. <"The Normativity of the Extraordinary: Musical Theatre on the Page and on the Stage> " by Stacy Wolf & Ryan Donovan
3. <"Performance, Pleasure, and Profit at the Victorian Freak Show> " by Nadya Durbach
4. <"Chick Webb's Extraordinary Body of Music> " by Meisha Rosenberg
5. <"The Enfreakment of the Premature Infant: incubator baby shows in the United States> " by Susan Kattwinkel II. HYBRIDITY 6. <"The Tragic Journey of a Mexican Savage to the Civilized World> " by Roger Bartra. Translated by Analola Santana
7. <"Rest in Peace, Charles Byrne?: The Last Testament and Enduring Legacy of the 18th Century 'Irish Giant'> " by David A. Gerber
8. <"Chin Up: Befriending the Bearded Ladies> " by Lilian Craton
9. <"Spectacles of Prognosis: El Nino Fidencio in the 21st Century> " by Susan Antebi III. MONSTROSITY 10. <"Monstrous Births and the Religious Imagination> " by Devan Stahl
11. <"Human or Alien: Tracing Enfreaked Subjects in the 20th and 21st Century Theatre of Disability> " by Danielle Bainbridge
12. <"The Mortification of Harvey Leach> " by Michael Mark Chemers IV. UNSETTLING 13. <"Freakish Fecundity: Birth and Baby Reality Television as Eugenicist Discourse> " by Katya Vrtis
14. <"Alexandrine: A German Princess with Down Syndrome who Survived the Holocaust> " by Robert Bogdan
15. <"Dead Weight: Exhibiting Fatness Postmortem> " by Joyce Huff
16. <"Disornamentation: An Optic for Reading Depictions of Disabled, Asian Women> " by Jenna Gerdsen
17. <"Sex Mad: Gender and Disability in the Art of Eudora Welty and Reginald Marsh> " Keri Watson V. LEARNING 18. <"The Pedagogical Utility of Early Freak Show Scholarship> " by Cynthia Wu
19. <"Teaching the Extraordinary Body: A Generation of Freaks and Monsters in the Classroom> " by Leonard Cassuto
2. <"The Normativity of the Extraordinary: Musical Theatre on the Page and on the Stage> " by Stacy Wolf & Ryan Donovan
3. <"Performance, Pleasure, and Profit at the Victorian Freak Show> " by Nadya Durbach
4. <"Chick Webb's Extraordinary Body of Music> " by Meisha Rosenberg
5. <"The Enfreakment of the Premature Infant: incubator baby shows in the United States> " by Susan Kattwinkel II. HYBRIDITY 6. <"The Tragic Journey of a Mexican Savage to the Civilized World> " by Roger Bartra. Translated by Analola Santana
7. <"Rest in Peace, Charles Byrne?: The Last Testament and Enduring Legacy of the 18th Century 'Irish Giant'> " by David A. Gerber
8. <"Chin Up: Befriending the Bearded Ladies> " by Lilian Craton
9. <"Spectacles of Prognosis: El Nino Fidencio in the 21st Century> " by Susan Antebi III. MONSTROSITY 10. <"Monstrous Births and the Religious Imagination> " by Devan Stahl
11. <"Human or Alien: Tracing Enfreaked Subjects in the 20th and 21st Century Theatre of Disability> " by Danielle Bainbridge
12. <"The Mortification of Harvey Leach> " by Michael Mark Chemers IV. UNSETTLING 13. <"Freakish Fecundity: Birth and Baby Reality Television as Eugenicist Discourse> " by Katya Vrtis
14. <"Alexandrine: A German Princess with Down Syndrome who Survived the Holocaust> " by Robert Bogdan
15. <"Dead Weight: Exhibiting Fatness Postmortem> " by Joyce Huff
16. <"Disornamentation: An Optic for Reading Depictions of Disabled, Asian Women> " by Jenna Gerdsen
17. <"Sex Mad: Gender and Disability in the Art of Eudora Welty and Reginald Marsh> " Keri Watson V. LEARNING 18. <"The Pedagogical Utility of Early Freak Show Scholarship> " by Cynthia Wu
19. <"Teaching the Extraordinary Body: A Generation of Freaks and Monsters in the Classroom> " by Leonard Cassuto