"Incorporating archives into his rich textual/contextual analysis, Nelson examines the Enlightenment's biopolitical foundations, eugenic ideas and experiments, colonial racial engineering proposals, biopolitical exclusion, biopolitics during the
Revolution, and biopolitical influence extending to the present. Nelson presents Enlightenment biopolitics as historically revolutionary and consequential. He acknowledges its worthy educational aims, its plans to create an engaged citizenry, and its improvement of individual and corporate living. Yet, he underscores paradoxical strains of preconceived/privileged standards, hubris, misuses of malleable equality, and rights violations that fostered racism, sexism, and exclusion. . . . An outstanding study on human complexity. . . . Essential."

Choice

“How can we account for France’s historical wavering on race, between an extraordinary openness to assimilation and outbursts of unashamed racism? Nelson’s Enlightenment Biopolitics offers an elegant solution to the puzzle.”

London Review of Books

“This is a highly original study that breaks new ground and discusses fundamental issues in Enlightenment history, political theory, and biopolitics. With flawless scholarship and an extraordinary mastery of the many relevant controversies and debates of the time, Nelson fills a major gap in our knowledge of the Enlightenment. This book makes important contributions to Enlightenment scholarship and will compel us to rethink the balance between equality and inequality, as well as between inclusion and exclusion, in Enlightenment social and political thought.”

Siep Stuurman, author of The Invention of Humanity: Equality and Cultural Difference in World History

“Enlightenment Biopolitics is a well-crafted book that intervenes in an important period using little-known documents. In this innovative work, Nelson offers a creative riposte to the canonical debate about social contract theory in the French eighteenth century and its echoes in modern discourse. Striking an impressive balance between shocking materials on human breeding and highly contextual readings of their implications, this book is a subtle and elegant contribution to the history of the French Enlightenment and French Revolution.”

Mackenzie Cooley, author of The Perfection of Nature: Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance

“Enlightenment Biopolitics is already an impressive and insightful contribution to the literature. That it is also provocative and stimulating reflects its scholarly importance. Nelson’s monograph is a major achievement that breaks new ground in the historiography of the European Enlightenment.”

European History Quarterly

“Nelson reveals that long before the eugenics movements of the modern age, French naturalists and philosophes saw transforming biological humanity as the key to solving sociopolitical and economic problems in France and its colonies.”

Science

“Enlightenment Biopolitics is a very interesting and lively book that will appeal to many readers whether or not they have any interest in or even knowledge of Michel Foucault’s work.”

Political Theory

“Enlightenment Biopolitics is a crucial contribution to conversations in French Studies at a time when the field is witnessing an efflorescence of work on race and whiteness. Ultimately, the book will be of interest to any scholar working on bodily difference, modernity, or European intellectual history.”

EuropeNow

"An intriguing and sophisticated examination of eighteenth-century science. . . . it is scrupulous in its attention to detail, careful in its claims, and nuanced in its analytical contributions. . . . Enlightenment Biopolitics will undoubtedly be a valuable resource for historians of science, intellectual historians, and interdisciplinary scholars of the Francophone Enlightenment."

Early American Literature