As a queer person I really liked the inclusion of queer/feminist multimedia such as literature and historical documents that prove the author's theory of queer of color method as political and disiplinary critique through the genelogy of all related areas. This was something I was deeply unaware of prior to receiving this arc and was interesting to learn about.

This was so insanely dense that I genuinely forgot the meaning of words (and that was just the introduction!). What an absolutely fascinating subject that I was SO looking forward to reading, but ultimately the academese diluted any meaning I could have gleaned from the book. Did not finish.

Deviant Matter by Kyla Wazana Tompkins is a work that seems to present some ideas we have largely confronted (for me, primarily through Foucault) but expanded from the extremely macro level to the micro level. Combined with considering matter that might change shape and state and that often elicit strong reactions from people, we are tasked with understanding how changes in scientific methods and processes have been appropriated to maintain marginalized populations at the periphery of society and culture.

I am going to state up front that I am going to need a couple more times through the book to grasp even a fair amount of the nuance. That said, the bigger picture, if I am seeing the picture correctly, is quite accessible with some effort. Because of that I am not going to offer much detailed commentary beyond my opening paragraph, you need to read the book to get what matters most to you from what is offered.

What I want to say here has more to do with the effect the book has had in just the couple of days since I finished it. In some ways a book that presents the reader with a new perspective through which to view future events has done its job.

I was looking through some open access books and a couple of passages stuck out because of having read Deviant Matter. First, in the abstract for The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalization of Women's Ageing by Alison M Downham Moore, the following sentence seems to speak, at least in part, to the processes discussed in Deviant Matters. "Older women were identified as an important patient cohort for the expanding medicalisation of French society and were advised to entrust themselves to the hygienic care of doctors in managing the whole era of life from around and after the final cessation of menses." We have the institutionalizing of medicine, and, as the rest of the abstract mentions, the marriage of medicine and politics. Equally curious when considered alongside Deviant Matter is the following sentence. "It tells a complex story of how women’s ageing featured in the demographic revolution in modern science, in the denigration of folk medicine, in the unique French field of hygiène, and in the fixation on women in the emergence of modern psychiatry."

Second, in the abstract for Medicine in an Age of Revolution by Peter Elmer, we have several sentences which address similar ideas. The one that best sums up the strands of the argument follows. "The body politic, a Renaissance commonplace, was now peopled by medical practitioners who often claimed a special authority when it came to diagnosing the ills of late seventeenth-century society." Even going further back we have a medical/scientific approach to describing and "diagnosing" societal "ills."

I apologize if you were hoping for a nice summary of the book's thesis, I'm afraid that is a bit beyond my ability right now. The sentence in my opening paragraph gives a broad description. If you're looking for a work that might be a little challenging, and maybe a little slow at first, but offers you plenty to consider about how we use words and concepts, often without realizing it, to contribute to the marginalization of groups of people you will be richly rewarded with this book. I hope my examples give you an idea of what types of things may stand out for you to consider after you've finished this book.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

This book wasn't necessarily what I was looking for, but I really appreciated the work and research that was done by the author to bring forward such a distinct and relevant point of view.