#IWD2016 Book review: the biopolitics of gender by Jemima Repo

In The Biopolitics of Gender, Jemima Repo traces a genealogy of ‘gender’, arguing that it is not an inherently feminist term, but rather emerged historically from the study of intersex and transgender people in the fields of sexology and psychology in the 1950s and 1960s. Positioning gender as a historically located biopolitical apparatus, Repo therefore questions its utility for contemporary feminist theory and politics. Ankit Kumar finds this a highly useful book for those interested in feminist thought as well as biopower, and hopes for future dialogue with works from the Global South that can contribute to forging a wider genealogy of ‘gender’.