Disability Studies Quarterly: "A timely and provocative contribution to the rich literature on biopolitics from which it draws."

At its core, Deadly Biocultures is about challenging binaries using the inherent contradictions found within the myriad manifestations of those binaries in US biocultures.

A trenchant analysis of the dark side of regulatory life-making todayDeadly Biocultures offers a timely and provocative contribution to the rich literature on biopolitics from which it draws. Ehlers and Krupar provide unique examples and deep engagement with a wide array of American biocultures, or the "cultural spheres where biomedicine extends beyond the formal institutions of the clinic, the hospital, the lab, and so forth and is incorporated into broader social practices and rationalities" (1). Their writing expertly balances theoretical engagement with grounded explanations, making it both accessible and insightful and an obvious addition to any course syllabus delving into the relationships between life, death, discourse, and power.

At its core, Deadly Biocultures is about challenging binaries using the inherent contradictions found within the myriad manifestations of those binaries in US biocultures. Ehlers & Krupar first and foremost challenge the binary of life and death, beautifully illustrating countless examples of how projects of life-making produce, hasten, individualize, and obscure death. They thoughtfully push the reader to consider novel examples of how efforts to make life for some, kill (in the Foucauldian sense) others. In the process, they also upend binaries of self/body, just/unjust, control/chaos, good/bad, healthy/unhealthy, normal/abnormal, natural/unnatural, and productive/unproductive.

Article at Disability Studies Quarterly.