Race, Heredity, and the Birth of the Modern

In this volume, Eigen places under sustained scrutiny some of our most basic modern assumptions about inheritance, genealogy, blood relations, and racial categories. Her study takes as its starting point a deceptively simple question, one too often taken for granted: what constitutes "good" bonds among humans, and what compels us to determine them so across generations as both a physical and a metaphysical attribute? In order to answer this question, Eigen ventures through a seemingly disparate array of early modern sources: from adages, common law, and literature about bloodlines and bastardy to philosophical, political, and scientific discourses that both confirm and confound the "common sense" of familial, communal, national, and racial identity.Sara Eigen, Figal is the author of 'Race, Heredity, and the Birth of the Modern', published 2008 under ISBN 9780415964791 and ISBN 0415964792.