Overview
Presents the surprising existential insights of science studies scholars
Discusses the 21st century relevance of ?Søren Kierkegaard
Poses exstentialism as a way to think about scientific controversies
Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book brings Søren Kierkegaard’s nineteenth-century existentialist project into our contemporary age, applying his understanding of “freedom” and “despair” to science and science studies, queer, decolonial and critical race theory, and disability studies. The book draws out the materialist dimensions of belief, examining the existential dynamics of phenomena like placebos, epigenetics, pedagogy, and scientific inquiry itself. Each chapter dramatizes the ways in which abstractions like “race” or “genes” and even “belief” are sites of contested practices with pressing political significance. Focusing on the existential dangers posed by neo-liberal and finance capitalist systems, the book brings to life the resources for resistance found within science studies and critical approaches to race, secularity, and disability. Throughout the book, Kierkegaard becomes an ally with ecological and developmental evolutionary theorists, as well as with science studies, critical race, and crip theorists who foreground the relational and impassioned nature of existence.
Reviews
“In this startlingly original book, Ada Jaarsma shows why science studies needs to get existential, and why feminist, queer, decolonial, and disability theorists need to engage with science studies (and vice versa). While critiquing secularizing narratives of development, Jaarsma draws on post-genomic science studies to develop a non-teleological, relational, and materialist approach that attends to the stories told by bodies-in-becoming as well as those captured by indifference or despair. Her distinctively anti-individualist Kierkegaard is an ally in resisting the deadening forces of colonialism and capitalism, and seeking out spiritually lively modes of existence that foster divergent perspectives and amplify possibilities for becoming.” (Rachel Jones, Associate Professor in Philosophy, George Mason University, USA)
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Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Kierkegaard After the Genome
Book Subtitle: Science, Existence and Belief in This World
Authors: Ada S. Jaarsma
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57981-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-57980-1Published: 01 September 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-86295-8Published: 12 May 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-57981-8Published: 20 August 2017
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 227
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Existentialism, Popular Science in Philosophy, Evolutionary Biology