Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  vii

Introduction: Depression, Biology, Aggression  1

Part I. Feminist Theory

1. Underbelly  21

2. The Biolocial Unconscious  45

3. Bitter Melancholy  68

Part II. Antidepressants

4. Chemical Transference  97

5. The Bastard Placebo  121

6. The Pharmakology of Depression  141

Conclusion  169

Notes  181

References  201

Index  225

About the Author

Elizabeth A. Wilson is Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University and the author of Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body, also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

"From organ speech to enteric moods, the gut is minded and the mind gutted by this book. It promises and delivers readings of biochemistry, pharmacology, anatomy, and psychoanalysis as strange matters that are unsettling to biology and feminism alike. Provocative in its diagnosis of the rejection of biology in feminist theory, I expect many readers will both devour this book, and throw it around the room a little."
*Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies*

"Liz Wilson rarely disappoints, and her latest offering, Gut Feminism, takes up her long standing project to bring feminism into irreducible and unruly alliance with biology several provocative steps further.... I can only commend Wilson for both the provocation and intellectual rigor of her daring."
*Contemporary Women's Writing*

"Gut Feminism is a valuable read for everyone interested in finding links between biology and socio-constructionist approaches within feminist theory.... Overall, Gut Feminism constitutes a relevant contribution to current feminist theory, not only in deconstructing scientific knowledge, but also in proposing innovative and exciting understandings of the human body and its performative relation to the world."
*Women's Studies International Forum*

"[T]imely, persuasive, and engaging.... Gut Feminism makes a valuable contribution to current feminist theory, queer theory, science studies, and neuroscientific humanities literature and will be of interest to scholars of all levels."
*Journal of International Women's Studies*

"[A] captivating study that crosses numerous disciplines in order to press the boundaries of both feminist theory and biology. . . . Gut Feminism is a timely and inventive project that extends the traditional scope and methods of feminist theorizing. . . . Wilson's project is fast-paced and far-reaching, engaging with an impressive breadth of data, theory, and argumentation, not, as Wilson identifies, as an attempt to bring consilience to the issues she touches on, but as a way to trace entanglements and ruptures within neuroscience and critical inquiry."

 
*Hypatia*

"Gut Feminism exemplifies what rigorous work in this field can bring to key debates not just within feminist theory, but within contemporary critical theory as a whole, and does so with intellectual boldness and precision."
*Australian Humanities Review*

"Gut Feminism is less a book about politics than one that makes politics happen. It shocks its readers into taking a stance—like a punch in the gut."
*Make*

"The work is groundbreaking and bordering on dangerous, as she disputes the antibiological position most prominent in feminist theorising thus far, and instead forges new lines of flight.... Gut Feminism is a powerhouse of a book. Gripping as only this calibre of feminist theory can be."
*Australian Feminist Studies*

"One of the most provocative and talked-about new books in feminist theory, Gut Feminism is as imaginative as it is polemical. Wilson nuances her intervention here in productive ways. She positions herself at the outset as critic of both 'anti-biologism' in feminism and of the enthusiasm that characterizes much of what constitutes the 'turn to neuroscience' in the humanities and social sciences."
*GLQ*

"Gut Feminism arrests, transforms, and taxes some of feminist theory’s most entrenched presuppositions. . . . [It] constitutes nothing less than a gut check for feminist theory, one that is likely to jostle and reanimate the field for years to come."
*Journal of Lesbian Studies*

"Gut Feminism changes how we need to think about embodiment; it changes what we need to know about depression. In this, its value extends far beyond the realm of feminist theory."
*philoSOPHIA*

"Gut Feminism is a beautifully written, complex book that brilliantly articulates the most recent developments of Wilson’s long-running project addressing the possible role of neurological 'data' . . . in feminist theory."
*New Genetics and Society*