The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves

by Davis, Kathy

• ISBN13: 9780822340454
• ISBN10: 0822340453
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-10-30
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

The bookOur Bodies, Ourselvesis a feminist success story. Selling more than four million copies since its debut in 1970, it has challenged medical dogmas about womenrs"s bodies and sexuality, shaped health care policies, energized the reproductive rights movement, and stimulated medical research on womenrs"s health. The book has influenced how generations of U.S. women feel about their bodies and health.Our Bodies, Ourselveshas also had a whole life outside the United States. It has been taken up, translated, and adapted by women across the globe, inspiring more than thirty foreign language editions.Kathy Davis tells the story of this remarkable bookrs"s global circulation. Based on interviews with members of the Boston Womenrs"s Health Book Collective, the group of women who createdOur Bodies, Ourselves, as well as responses to the book from readers, and discussions with translators from Latin America, Egypt, Thailand, China, Eastern Europe, Francophone Africa, and many other countries and regions, Davis shows whyOur Bodies, Ourselvescould never have been so influential if it had been just a popular manual on womenrs"s health. It was precisely the bookrs"s distinctive epistemology, inviting women to use their own experiences as resources for producing situated, critical knowledge about their bodies and health, that allowed the book to speak to so many women within and outside the United States. Davis provides a grounded analysis of how feminist knowledge and political practice actually travel, and she shows how the process of transformingOur Bodies, Ourselvesoffers a glimpse of a truly transnational feminism, one that joins the acknowledgment of difference and diversity among women in different locations with critical reflexivity and political empowerment.

Author Biography

Kathy Davis is a senior researcher at the Research Institute for History and Culture, Utrecht University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
The Book and Its Travels
OBOS in the United States: The Enigma of a Feminist "Success Story"	p. 19
OBOS Abroad: From "Center" to "Periphery" and Back	p. 50
Feminist Politics of Knowledge
Between Empowerment and Bewitchment: The Myth of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective	p. 85
Reclaiming Women's Bodies: Colonialist Trope or Critical Epistemology?	p. 120
Creating Feminist Subjects: The Reader and the Text	p. 142
Transnational Body/Politics
Oppositional Translations and Imagined Communities: Adapting OBOS	p. 169
Transnational Knowledges, Transnational Politics	p. 197
Foreign-Language Editions of OBOS	p. 214
Books Inspired by OBOS	p. 217
Translations and Adaptations of OBOS in Progress	p. 218
Translations and Adaptations of OBOS Seeking Funds for Start-up	p. 219
Notes	p. 221
Bibliography	p. 253
Index	p. 273
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