Molecular Feminisms

“Should feminists clone?” “What do neurons think about?” “How can we learn from bacterial writing?” These and other provocative questions have long preoccupied neuroscientist, molecular biologist, and intrepid feminist theorist Deboleena Roy, who takes seriously the capabilities of lab “objects”—bacteria and other human, nonhuman, organic, and inorganic actants—in order to understand processes of becoming.

In Molecular Feminisms, Roy investigates science as feminism at the lab bench, engaging in an interdisciplinary conversation between molecular biology, Deleuzian philosophies, posthumanism, and postcolonial and decolonial studies. She brings insights from feminist theory together with lessons learned from bacteria, subcloning, and synthetic biology, arguing that renewed interest in matter and materiality must be accompanied by a feminist rethinking of scientific research methods and techniques.

The open access edition of Molecular Feminisms is available thanks to a TOME grant from Emory University, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

DOI 10.6069/j163-3c90

Deboleena Roy is Associate Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University. She has published her work in journals such as Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy; American Journal of Bioethics; Neuroethics; Australian Feminist Studies; Rhizomes: Cultural Studies of Emerging Knowledge; Endocrinology; Neuroendocrinology; and the Journal of Biological Chemistry. She has contributed chapters to the anthologies Handbook for Feminist Research: Theory and Praxis (2011) and Neurofeminism: Issues at the Intersection of Feminist Theory and Cognitive Science (2012).

Deboleena Roy is associate professor and chair of the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and holds a joint appointment in the Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology Program at Emory University.

"A timely and welcome intervention is Deboleena Roy's book, Molecular Feminisms: Biology, Becomings, and Life in the Lab. Thinking about the connections and potential created between molecular biology and feminism, and philosophy and science, Roy thinks with philosophy [and] situates her work, which she names molecular feminisms, in the ontological and ethical reorientations made possible by thinking matter, ethics, and knowledge-making practices together."

"Molecular Feminisms is a vital book, in every sense. It is a lively and important account that thinks biology otherwise, in ethnographically rigorous ways. At a political moment when fighting for science is as urgent as critiquing its reductionisms, Deboleena Roy provokes us into thinking about what a feminist stance towards, and praxis of, the life sciences might look like."—Kaushik Sunder Rajan, author of Pharmocracy: Value, Politics, and Knowledge in Global Biomedicine

"Reconfiguring a more creative and mutually beneficial interaction between the sciences and the humanities is an immensely important task and Molecular Feminisms provides an excellent and accessible beginning to this significant long-term project."—Elizabeth Grosz, author of The Incorporeal: Ontology, Ethics, and the Limits of Materialism

"Employing the stolonic growth of grass as a strategy for connectedness and the expansion of thought, Roy engages and enlightens the reader as to how feminism informs molecular biology and vice versa."—Margaret McCarthy, professor of pharmacology, University of Maryland School of Medicine

"What does feminist science for the twenty-first century look like? Drawing together molecular biology practices with feminist theory, Roy brilliantly shows us the way with her materialist approach to cloning, estrogen receptors, neurons, and grass stolons. This book is bound to be a classic in feminist technoscience studies."—Michelle Murphy, professor of history and women and gender studies, University of Toronto

"Roy tracks her formation as a feminist theorist in coproduction with her formation as a scientist. Molecular Feminisms makes an important contribution to the vibrant discussions in postcolonial science studies."—Alexis Shotwell, author of Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times