Publication date:
04 September 1997Length of book:
292 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9780847685653
Do human beings become creatures of the technology they create? Is gender an artifact of the work performed by such manufactured things? Drawing on a broad variety of literary and philosophical sources, including Homer's Iliad, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, accounts of the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, and recent scholarship in feminist, postmodern, and political theory, this impressive book offers strikingly original ways for readers to think about technology, gender identity, culture, the environment, politics, and the ways women and men struggle to make sense of the gifts of Prometheus. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, environmental thought, and gender, cultural, and literary studies.
Kaufman-Osborn has offered a lively and provocative reading of pragmatism in light of everyday example and ordinary life, bringing philosophy to bear on questions of the body, sex, sexual difference, and some of the more urgent matters in modernity. His is a wonderfully readable book, witty, astute, insightful, and erudite.