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This collection comprises a diverse and stimulating collection of essays on questions of gender and sexualities, crafted by both established and younger researchers. The collection includes fascinating insights into topics as varied as the popularity of thong underwear in urban Kenya, the complexity of Tanzanian youth's negotiation of HIV-cultures, the dialogues between religion and controversial questions in sexualities activism, and the meaning of living as a Zimbabwean girl, who became HIV-positive because her mother had no access to antiretroviral drugs during pregnancy. Some pieces deepen contemporary debates, others initiate new questions. The collection seeks to sustain and invigorate research, policy-making and continentally-focused thought on difficult, yet compelling, realities

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. The Wonder of Minor Experiences -- Queasiness -- A Brief Phenomenology of Enchantment -- Reuse and Recycle -- Enchantment without Design -- Joyful Attachment -- How the Story Goes -- 2. Cross-Species Encounters -- Crossings and Enchantment -- Andoar's Transcendence -- Rotpeter's Way Out -- Alex Changes the Subject -- Body without Organs -- My Wager -- Marvels and Monsters -- 3. The Marvelous Worlds of Paracelsus, Kant, and Deleuze -- The Satyrion Root -- Enchantment and Repetition -- Kantian Wonders

In 2004, the African Gender Institute ran a continental research project, Mapping Sexualities, among the objectives of which was the development of a research methodology suited to carrying out in-depth case studies of the dynamics of gender and contemporary sexual cultures in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda. This book is the result of that research. The chapters cover broad-ranging issues and include questions about what it means to research topics that are unpopular or fraught with the sense of the taboo that underpins much work in sexualities and gender studies. Overall, the diverse pieces within the collection offer the opportunity to see qualitative research not as the 'poor cousin' of quantitative studies but as a zone which raises intellectual and political challenges.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- 1. The Force of Things -- 2. The Agency of Assemblages -- 3. Edible Matter -- 4. A Life of Metal -- 5. Neither Vitalism nor Mechanism -- 6. Stem Cells and the Culture of Life -- 7. Political Ecologies -- 8. Vitality and Self-interest -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

"It is a commonplace that the modern world cannot be experienced as enchanted--that the very concept of enchantment belongs to past ages of superstition. Jane Bennett challenges that view. She seeks to rehabilitate enchantment, showing not only how it is still possible to experience genuine wonder, but how such experience is crucial to motivating ethical behavior. A creative blend of political theory, philosophy, and literary studies, this book is a powerful and innovative contribution to an emerging interdisciplinary conversation about the deep connections between ethics, aesthetics, and politics. As Bennett describes it, enchantment is a sense of openness to the unusual, the captivating, and the disturbing in everyday life. She guides us through a wide and often surprising range of sources of enchantment, showing that we can still find enchantment in nature, for example, but also in such unexpected places as modern technology, advertising, and even bureaucracy. She then explains how everyday moments of enchantment can be cultivated to build an ethics of generosity, stimulating the emotional energy and honing the perceptual refinement necessary to follow moral codes. Throughout, Bennett draws on thinkers and writers as diverse as Kant, Schiller, Thoreau, Kafka, Marx, Weber, Adorno, and Deleuze. With its range and daring, The Enchantment of Modern Life is a provocative challenge to the centuries-old ''narrative of disenchantment,'' one that presents a new ''alter-tale'' that discloses our profound attachment to the human and nonhuman world.

This essay explores five figures of "sympathy" at work in Walt Whitman's writings, with a focus on Leaves of Grass. Of particular note is the way Whitman presents sympathy as not only a moral sentiment but also a more-than-human natural force that draws bodies together. Sympathy was a key term in the lexicon of nineteenth-century American political debates, and we find in Whitman and others elements of a non-modern sense of sympathy as a vital or physical force operating below, through, and beyond human bodies.