Contents -- Introduction -- Notes -- PART I. REPRODUCTION AND THE EARLY LIFE SCIENCES -- 1. Generation, Genealogy, and Time: The Concept of Reproduction from Histoire naturelle to Naturphilosophie -- Generation, Production, Reproduction: Historical-Semantic Shifts -- Reproduction As Multiplication: La Mettrie, Maupertuis, and Buffon -- Reproduction As Repetition: Blumenbach, Herder, and Kielmeyer -- Reproduction As Return: Schelling, Görres, Hegel -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 2. Organic Molecules, Parasites, Urthiere: The Controversial Nature of Spermatic Animals, 1749-1841 -- Thinking the Organic World As a Unity: Buffon and Blumenbach -- Ordering the World Through Gender Hierarchy: Oken -- Combining Antagonistic Visions of the Organic World -- Notes -- 3. The Scientific Construction of Gender and Generation in the German Late Enlightenment and in German Romantic Naturphilosophie -- Ambiguity and Interaction: Wilhelm Von Humboldt -- Pure Masculinity, Separation, and Polarization: Lorenz Oken -- The "Female As Such": Carl Gustav Carus -- Notes -- 4. Zeugung/Fortpflanzung: Distinctions of Medium in the Discourse on Generation around 1800 -- Fortpflanzung: Modes of Continuity in Goethe, Herder, and Fichte -- Fortpflanzung's Propagation: Johann Wilhem Ritter on Acoustics and Chemistry -- Ritter's Acoustics -- Ritter'S Chemistry -- Virtualizing Propagation: Karl Ernst von Baer -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 5. Treviranus' Biology: Generation, Degeneration, and the Boundaries of Life -- A Science of Living Nature: Biology and the Boundaries of Life -- Biology As the History of Physical Life: Generation and Degeneration -- Conclusion -- Notes -- PART II. ARTICULATIONS OF RACE AND GENDER -- 6. Skin Color and the Origin of Physical Anthropology (1640-1850) -- "Why are the Ethiopians Black?" Skin Color As a Research Object -- Explanations of Blackness.

Skin Color, Classification, and Difference -- Skin Color, Slavery, and the Notion of Race -- On the Construction of a European Somatic Identity -- Notes -- 7. The Caucasian Slave Race: Beautiful Circassians and the Hybrid Origin of European Identity -- "The Handsomest Women of the World": Beauty and Desire -- Erotic Commodities of Trade: The Circulation of Circassian Women -- Crossbreedings: Improving Blood and Beauty -- Inventing the Caucasians -- Proto-Eugenics, Exotic Desire, and White Women -- Notes -- 8. Analogy of Analogy: Animals and Slaves in Mary Wollstonecraft's Defense of Women's Rights -- Environment and Analogy: Samuel Stanhope Smith and Catherine Macaulay -- Olaudah Equiano: Slavery and Animal Analogies -- Wollstonecraft and the Animal Analogy -- Clustering Analogies: Animals, Slaves, Women -- Analogies As Analogies of Analogies -- Notes -- 9. Reproducing Difference: Race and Heredity from a longue durée Perspective -- Heredity and Disease -- Heredity and Human Variety -- Heredity and the Struggle For Life -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 10. Heredity and Hybridity in the Natural History of Kant, Girtanner, and Schelling during the 1790s -- The Role of the Keime in Kant's Theory of Race -- Blumenbach's Rejection of the Keime in his Essay on the Bildungstrieb -- Kant's Endorsement of Girtanner's Contribution -- Schelling's Testimony -- Kant's Legacy -- Notes -- 11. Sexual Polarity in Schelling and Hegel -- Schelling's Polarization: Production and Inhibition -- Male Production-Female Inhibition -- Hegel's Polarization: Concept and Matter -- The Sexualization of Concept and Matter -- Sexual and Racial Difference -- Sexual Difference and the Philosophy of Nature -- Notes -- About the Contributors -- Index.