Ed Cohen_Body Worth Defending_Foucault Studies
Above is a link to my review article in the September Foucault Studies journal. It looks at Ed Cohen’s book A Body Worth Defending: Immunity, Biopolitics and the Apotheosis of the Modern Body.
As you might tell from my review, I find the book overall problematic. However, there are many redeeming features which make this text well worth reading. As a sidenote, it must be said that Roberto Esposito had proposed most of the core arguments in this text over a decade ago. There is a close genealogy of immunity and its progression into a biopolitics of the “apotheosis of the modern body,” which may be good for social scientists and biologists. I see his “apotheosis” as the real problem in this text, and it becomes clear – quite quickly I must say – why this is the case. Enjoy.
Yeah, I saw that it was out this morning, but didn’t have time to read your review.
I agree about the Esposito comment, you can tell from the book it was one of those things where he had basically written the book and found Esposito near the end of his work on the book. If you look at my post on Esposito’s Third Person, let’s just say I sympathize.
Scu–I know for a fact you are right on target about Esposito being the product of an inadvertent research oversight.
I enjoyed your Esposito post very much, and really look forward to seeing him this weekend at Cornell’s Commonalities conference. Thanks for the comments!