Full Description
Transformed States offers a timely history of the politics, ethics, medical applications and cultural representations of the biotechnological revolution, from the Human Genome Project to the Covid-19 pandemic. In exploring the entanglements of mental and physical health in an age of biotechnology, it views the post-Cold War 1990s as the horizon for understanding the intersection of technoscience and culture in the early twenty-first century.
The book draws on original research spanning the presidencies of George H. W. Bush and Joe Biden to show how the politics of science and technology shape the medical uses of biotechnology. Some of these technologies reveal fierce ideological conflicts in the arenas of cloning, reproduction, artificial intelligence, longevity, gender affirmation, vaccination and environmental health. Interweaving politics and culture, the book illustrates how these health issues are reflected in and challenged by literary and cinematic texts, from Oryx and Crake to Annihilation, and from Gattaca to Avatar.
By assessing the complex relationship between federal politics and the biomedical industry, Transformed States develops an ecological approach to public health that moves beyond tensions between state governance and private enterprise. To that end, Martin Halliwell analyses thirty years that radically transformed American science, medicine, and policy, positioning biotechnology in dialogue with fears and fantasies about an emerging future in which health is ever more contested.
Along with the two earlier books, Therapeutic Revolutions (2013) and Voices of Mental Health (2017), Transformed States is the final volume of a landmark cultural and intellectual history of mental health in the United States, journeying from the combat zones of World War II to the global emergency of Covid-19.
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Health Politics, Bioethics, and the Possibilities of Biotechnology
Part 1: Genetic States
Chapter 1: Genomics, Diversity, and the Millennial Imagination
Chapter 2: Embryonic Entanglements: Fetal Design and Life Cultures
Part 2: Conscious States
Chapter 3: Health in the Neuronal Workspace: Rethinking Consciousness and Intelligence
Chapter 4: Augmented Lives: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in a Time of Conflict
Part 3: Dynamic States
Chapter 5: Keeping On: Productive Aging and the Quest for Life Extension
Chapter 6: Travelling Through: Trans Identities and Biotech Potentiality
Part 4: Perilous States
Chapter 7: Pandemic Culture: Immunization Politics and the Covid-19 Acceleration
Chapter 8: Invisible Toxicities: Environmental Health and the Limits of Biotechnology
Conclusion: Mental Health and Biotechnology Beyond 2030
Acknowledgements
Index
