In Gut Feminism Elizabeth A. Wilson urges feminists to rethink their resistance to biological and pharmaceutical data. Turning her attention to the gut and depression, she asks what conceptual and methodological innovations become possible when feminist theory isn't so instinctively antibiological. She examines research on anti-depressants, placebos, transference, phantasy, eating disorders and suicidality with two goals in mind: to show how pharmaceutical data can be useful for feminist theory, and to address the necessary role of aggression in feminist politics. Gut Feminism's provocative challenge to feminist theory is that it would be more powerful if it could attend to biological data and tolerate its own capacity for harm.

Acknowledgments  vii

Introduction: Depression, Biology, Aggression  1

Part I. Feminist Theory

1. Underbelly  21

2. The Biolocial Unconscious  45

3. Bitter Melancholy  68

Part II. Antidepressants

4. Chemical Transference  97

5. The Bastard Placebo  121

6. The Pharmakology of Depression  141

Conclusion  169

Notes  181

References  201

Index  225

Elizabeth A. Wilson is Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University and the author of Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body, also published by Duke University Press.