The Question of 'Nature': What Has Social Constructionism to Offer Feminist Theory?
The Question of ‘Nature’: What has Social Constructionism to offer Feminist Theory?
Elisa Fiaccadori
SOCIOLOGY RESEARCH PAPERS 2 The Question of ‘Nature’: What has Social Constructionism to offer Feminist Theory? The Question of ‘Nature’: What has Social Constructionism to offer Feminist Theory? 3
The Question of ‘Nature’: What has Social Constructionism to offer Feminist Theory?
Elisa Fiaccadori
The question of ‘nature’ is of particular up reinforcing exactly these constructed importance for feminist theorizing as differences between ‘men’ and ‘women’, feminists have long come to realise that it is ‘culture’ and ‘nature’, which they refuse on often upon this ‘concept’ that the giveness of the basis of their sexualising, racialising and sexual differences and, consequently, the universalising effects (see Butler, 1993; Alcoff inferiority of ‘women’, is assumed1. It is in Tong and Tuana, 1995; Flax in Nicholson, against biological determinism that feminists 1990). Instead, they are more concerned with have developed their most powerful theories problematising ‘nature’ by asserting the social and critiques of dominant categorisations of and cultural constructedness of the category ‘women’ (see, for example, de Beauvoir, ‘women’. According to post-structural 19892 ; Rich, 1981). Particularly, both ‘second feminists, it is only by acknowledging the wave feminists’ generally, and eco-feminists constructedness of ‘nature’, consequently of specifically, tended to criticise dominant ‘women’ (and ‘men’), that ‘spaces for more conceptualisations of women as ‘naturally’ plural forms of self-identification’ can be inferior and assert the political importance of created (in Kemp and Squires, 1997: 469). reclaiming ‘nature’, ‘the natural’ and ‘the feminine’ from the grip of exploitative To the extent that social constructionism scientific patriarchalism (in Kemp and Squires, problematises ‘nature’ as given, it offers 1997: 469). However, whereas the question feminists ways of criticising dominant of nature remains extremely important to conceptions of being as based on false today’s feminists, post-structuralist feminists foundational claims about the nature of both Goldsmiths Sociology Research Papers have since re-evaluated the latter manoeuvre ‘women’ and ‘men’. Contrary to the idea arguing that it is inadequate, not even of ‘nature’ as given social constructionism3 Copyright: Goldsmiths, University of London desirable, insofar as, paradoxically, it ends suggests that ‘nature’ is a contingent social and Elisa Fiaccadori 2006
IBSN 1-904158-74-9 1 To oppose the idea that women are naturally inferior to men, in 1976 Simon de Beauvoir asserts ‘one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ (de Beauvoir, 1988: 295). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without 2 Although, de Beauvoir’s implicit but also, at times, explicit rejection of ‘the body’ is seen by most feminists as problematic insofar as it accepts and thus reinforces a split – an impossible split – between the mind and the body, which ultimately may the permission of the publishers. prove counter-productive for ‘women’ (in Price and Shildrick, 1999: 4; but see also Butler, 1993: 4).
First published in Great Britan 2006 by 3 Social constructionism is not easily definable. It encompasses an array of theoretical positions (from symbolic intereactionism Goldsmiths, University of London, to postmodernism), whose aims and objectives are very complex and different (see, for instance, Berger & Luckmann, 1966, London SE14 6NW. Goffman, 1954, Foucault, 1979; Derrida, 1974 among many others). However, the one thing that associates them is that they all share a common ‘epistemological scepticism’ about the nature of ‘facts’. And it is this ‘epistemological scepticism’ against meta-narratives of ‘reason’, ‘progress’ and ‘truth’ which has proved very valuable for feminists. 4 The Question of ‘Nature’: What has Social Constructionism to offer Feminist Theory? The Question of ‘Nature’: What has Social Constructionism to offer Feminist Theory? 5 and cultural construct that should not be of ‘culture’, ‘knowledge’, ‘language’ and deemed a specifically male hormone and representations of it, Judith Butler develops taken for granted. This is not to say that ‘power’ (see, for example, Harding, 1991; estrogen a specifically female one, with the Foucauldian insights further to create a feminists accept social constructionism Pateman, 1989; hooks, 1992; Spivak, 1988; advance in organic chemistry and the sophisticated theory of the body’s materiality uncritically; yet, increasingly they make use of Haraway, 1990; Grosz, 1994; Braidotti, development of experimental techniques, as performatively constituted by the it not just to explain ‘women’ but also the 1994). This, however, is not to suggest that scientists began to conceptualize hormones regulatory norms of ‘sex’ (Butler in Harrison oppression of other ‘bodies that matter’ (see, feminists have lost sight of questions of differently. Hormones began to be and Hood-Williams, 2002). More specifically, for example, Butler, 1993; Grosz, 1994; ‘nature’; on the contrary. Nevertheless, it is conceptualized as ‘catalysts: chemical against Freud’s notion of identification as the Spivak, 1988). through ‘culture’ that ‘nature’ and what are substances, sexually unspecific in origin and resolution of the Oedipal complex, she writes: presumed ‘natural’ phenomena, such as the function, exerting manifold activities, instead Nevertheless, as this paper will show, despite body, sex, reproduction, biology and of being primarily sex agents’ (Oudshoorn, ‘Because the solution of the Oedipal these important contributions to the question hormones, to cite only a few examples, are 1994: 36). At this point, investigation into sex dilemma can be either positive or of ‘nature’ and of the individual as socially increasingly being explained within feminism. hormones became more sophisticated and negative, the prohibition of the opposite- and culturally constructed, this approach not only were androgens and estrogens sexed other can either lead to an raises a difficult question: how is it possible In her book Beyond the Natural Body: An found together (e.g. the presence of ‘female’ identification with the sex of the parent to talk about ‘nature’ without re-inscribing it Archeology of Sex Hormones, for instance, hormones was found in the urine of stallions) lost or a refusal of identification…’ into ‘culture’ precisely under the guise of Nelly Oudshoorn looks at scientific but it also became apparent that they were (Butler, 1990: 134). their radical separation or difference (see knowledge and, in line with Thomas close chemical cousins and that testosterone Kirby, 1997; Wilson, 1998; Irigaray, 1985; Laqueur4, she suggests that scientists are could be converted to estrogen (Oudshoorn, In other words, ‘the refusal of identification’ Weed and Schor, 1994; but also and again actively constructing rather than discovering 1994). However, Oudshoorn argues that is also part of the process of ‘materialization’ Butler, 1993; Grosz, 1994; Spivak, 1988)? reality and that ‘the naturalistic reality of the ‘although scientists abandoned the concept through which identities develop. body as such does not exist’ (Oudshoorn in of sexual specificity, the terminology was not Consequently, Butler suggests that although As Michelle Barrett notes, ‘[i]n the past ten Harrison and Hood-Williams, 2002: 133). adjusted to this change in conceptualization identification enables certain sexed subjects years we have seen an extensive ‘turn to Her contribution to the question of ‘nature’ […] the names male and female sex to emerge, ‘in the demand that identification culture’ in feminism (Barret in Kemp & consists in challenging the idea that there is hormones have been kept in current use, be reiterated persists the possibility, the Squires, 1997: 112). The ‘turn to culture’ has such a thing as a ‘natural body’ by showing both inside and outside the scientific threat, that it will fail to repeat’ (Butler, 1993: meant that increasingly feminists have moved how scientific knowledge constructs rather community’ (Oudshoorn, 1994: 12, 36). This, 102). Thus, she contends, the process of away from conceptualisations of ‘women’ as than explains the ‘natural’ facts that it is she says, demonstrates how scientific ‘materialization’ through which both ‘men’ a unified ‘natural’ category and come to presumed to discover. Specifically, drawing knowledge is bound by what she calls a and ‘women’ develop their identities is not perceive it as a differentiated social construct. on Foucault, she describes the archeology ‘disciplinary style’ (a term which she takes completely successful and cannot be Particularly by bringing the question of of sex hormones in terms of a process of from Foucault, 1999) that constructs regarded as universal (Butler, 1993: 2). ‘difference’ to the forefront, ‘second wave’ sexualisation in which sex hormones are phenomena as ‘natural’ in order to legitimate Specifically, it is through the refusal of feminists have shown that ‘women’s situation created as ‘material products’ to ‘transform its premises and findings even when they are identification (or ‘disidentification’) that what of oppression is not reducible to women’s and sexualize the world we live in’ contradictory and ‘messy’ (see also Fausto- she calls ‘abject others’ develop; ‘bodies’ who ‘biology’ or ‘nature’ (see, for example, de (Oudshoorn in Harrison and Hood-Williams, Sterling in Harrison and Hood-Williams, 2002: do not seem to count but who are Beauvoir, 1989; Firestone, 1970; Rich, 1979; 2002: 127). Thus, for example, she explains 125). In other words, according to this view, nonetheless necessary to the creation of the Irigaray, 1985; Cixous, 1987) because as for that while early research on ‘sex hormones’ ‘the matter’ that is presumed and awaiting heterosexual subject (Butler, 1993: 3-4). As ‘other oppressed bodies’ (see Butler, 1993) was firmly focussed on the gonads (or the work of science is in reality constructed Grosz says, for Butler identity is performed or ‘women’s oppression is related to questions reproductive sex glands) and androgen was (materialized) by science itself (see also Barad produced through action and not simply, as in Rosengarten, [n. d.]: 5, 7) psychoanalysis suggests, through 4 In his book Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, Laqueor (1990) develops a powerful argument about identification (see Butler in Grosz, not dated). scientific explanation of the body as socially contingent with the aim to unsettling biologistic arguments about the Moreover, in opposition to the idea that the This is why Butler argues that it is not differences between women and men. In her book Beyond the Natural Body: An Archeology of Sex Hormones, Oudshoorn also questions scientific knowledge and the naturalistic view of the body that it produces. biological body exists independently of possible to talk about ‘matter’ and/or ‘sex’ as 6 The Question of ‘Nature’: What has Social Constructionism to offer Feminist Theory? The Question of ‘Nature’: What has Social Constructionism to offer Feminist Theory? 7 if they were a priori essential categories from Her intention is not to deny the existence of domination, but also to open them up to Moreover, what about those bodies that do which ‘bodies’ develop because they are part ‘matter’ [and she, in fact, acknowledges the new possibilities for ‘resignification’ (Butler, not have the ‘cultural’ and ‘economic’ capital of these disciplinary processes and, thus, possibility of an array of “immaterialities” 1993: 30). For her, in fact, it is not enough to to engage in the politics of representation?5 deeply implicated in them. These categories, that pertain to the body (see Butler, 1993: challenge the radical exclusion of ‘women’ she states, are not naturally given phenomena, 66)] but to analyse and problematise the from hegemonic cultural formations as if the According to Kirby, ‘acknowledging that whose reality can be somehow separated from ‘process of materialization that stabilizes over category ‘woman’ was a ‘natural’ and identity is always problematic does not mean the cultural strictures of ‘gender performance’ time to produce the effect of boundary, fixity universal one. Rather the category itself and that we can remove ourselves from the but regulatory constructs/norms, whose and surface we call “matter”’ (Butler, 1993: the normative conditions that produce it, politics of identifying practices’ (Kirby, 1997: ‘materiality’ can only ‘be re-thought as an 9). According to Butler, ‘only if matter can including ‘race’ and ‘class’ as well as ‘sex’, 172). If on the one hand, the idea of the effect of power’ (Butler in Harrison and Hood- be rescued from its location as both prior need to be displaced if feminists want to natural as given is very difficult (impossible) to Williams, 2002: 192). ‘Sexual difference’, says and passive with regard to the notion of deprive ‘hegemonic culture and its critics of sustain, on the other, as Kirby suggests, the Butler, ‘is never simply a function of material production’, for feminists it will be possible the claim to essentialist accounts of gender implicit attempt of Butler’s theory to explain difference’ because ‘sex is an ideal construct to displace ‘the hierarchical economy of the identity’ (Butler in Nicholson, 1990: 325, ‘matter’ or ‘nature’ through ‘discourse’, is which is forcibly materialized’ (Butler, 1993: 1). nature/culture opposition and the sexualizing 338). As she says, ‘“[s]ex” is always produced also problematic insofar as it risks privileging Put differently, for Butler, ‘sex’ works to and racialising agenda that it informs’ as a reiteration of hegemonic norms’ (Butler, ‘the ideational’ over ‘the material’, ‘the materialize one’s body’s sex and it does so (quoted in Kirby, 1997: 101). She is aware 1993: 107); thus, only by questioning the cultural’ over ‘the natural’ and, thus, following a ‘heterosexual imperative’, which, that this is not an easy task because to naturalness of sex itself, can feminists move reinstalling just these ‘identities and as she shows, is in no way ‘absolute’. Thus, dislodge ‘matter’ itself is not just to render towards understanding how certain bodies sexualized hierarchies between ideality and Butler argues, what individuals signify is not any foundational conceptions of being come to matter, while ‘initiating new matter, culture and nature, and mind and ontologically given and/or ‘natural’ and ‘to obsolete but also to displace any notions of possibilities, new ways for bodies to matter’ body’, which it was one of her main aims to return to matter to ground claims about sexual ‘femininity’ as essentialising. However, she (Butler, 1993: 30). displace (Kirby, 1997: 107). According to difference’ is problematic because ‘matter is regards this manoeuvre as indispensable to Kirby, this is because Butler’s theory is limited not prior to discourse’ but ‘is fully sedimented the destabilisation of hegemonic oppressive However, as this paper will demonstrate, to a linguistic or discursive account which with discourses on sex and sexuality’ (Butler in norms and practices (Butler, 1993: 30-32). although Butler’s theory illuminates the fails to tackle ‘the in-itself of matter’, ‘the Burke, Schor and Whitford, 1994: 143). She She states: problems of elaborating a ‘universal materiality of matter’ (Kirby, 1997: 108). In claims, ‘there is no reference to a pure body philosophy’ based on a fixed and immutable Butler’s account ‘matter’ is accounted for as which is not at the same time a further ‘To call a presupposition [materiality] into conception of the individual, it is not without that which exceeds representation; thus, in formation of that body’ (Butler, 1993: 10); question is not the same as doing away difficulties. Following Butler’s question, ‘[f]or Kirby’s words, it is rendered unspeakable and consequently, the question is not whether to with it; rather, it is to free it from its whom is outness a historically available and unthinkable by the same tokens that qualified re-claim and/or rescue ‘materiality’ from the metaphysical lodgings in order to affordable option?’ (Butler, 1993: 227, italics it as ‘that which matters’ (Kirby, 1997: 108). grip of patriarchalism but: understand what political interests were added), for instance, it may seem plausible to Consequently, Kirby challenges Butler’s secured in and by that metaphysical ask: what about those ‘bodies’ that do not assertion that ‘to return to matter requires ‘…why “materiality” has become a sign placing, and thereby to permit the term resist ‘identification’ and are inexorably that we return to matter as a sign’ (see of irreducibility, that is, how is it that the to occupy and to serve very different constrained within specific, ‘material’, Butler, 1993: 49) ‘by putting the sign itself materiality of sex is understood as that political aims’ (Butler, 1993: 30). ‘sexual’, ‘racial’ and ‘class’ boundaries? into question’6 and by exploring identity at which only bears cultural constructions and, therefore, cannot be a construction? In other words, according to Butler, it is only 5 Although this essay is not concerned with exploring the limits of a politics centered on re-signifying practices in relation to ‘material economic inequalities’, the question seems mandatory. For an analysis of these limits see, for instance, Fraser, […] And what kinds of constructions are by freeing ‘materiality’ from its metaphysical 1998/2000; Hennessey, 1993/1999; O’Sullivan, 1994; Benhabib, 1995; Klein, 2000. foreclosed through the figuring of this lodgings that it becomes possible not only to 6 Kirby puts the sign into question by exploring Saussure’s idea that the sign is arbitrary. Particularly, she says that, although site as outside or beneath construction contest/deconstruct ‘natural/biological’ taken Saussure tries dispensing with the referent through the notion of arbitrariness (Saussure, 1974: 67), the ambiguities in his itself?’ (Butler, 1993: 28). for granted sexual categories, which texts show that the referent is not so easily dispensable. According to Kirby, Saussure's concept of language as a differential system without positive terms implies that the concept of arbitrariness cannot simply be located between two separate reproduce and reinforce existing relations of terms; it is also within each term. Hence, for Kirby, the body is as mutable and articulate as culture (Kirby in Mutman, 1999). 8 The Question of ‘Nature’: What has Social Constructionism to offer Feminist Theory? The Question of ‘Nature’: What has Social Constructionism to offer Feminist Theory? 9
‘the atomic level of its constitution’ (Kirby, the nature/language opposition is not simply Thus, following Irigaray, Stone suggests that studies/theories, on the other (see Wilson, 1997: 128). According to Kirby, the paradox to problematise ‘nature as that which always feminists can not proceed in their claims as if 1997/8, Rosengarten, 2004)10. of the sign’s identity (that it is dependent bears the traces of discourse’, but to there were no differences between ‘the upon ‘différance’; see Derrida, 1974) is conceptualise nature as ‘articulate’ (Kirby sexes’ because in reality ‘men’ and ‘women’ More specifically, Elisabeth Wilson challenges symptomatic of the paradox of identity 1997: 72, 90). She, therefore, employs are different and only represented as ‘the the idea that the study of sexuality needs to generally. And the process of différance Derrida’s insights that ‘there is no outside of same’ to accommodate a phallocentric be separated from the neurosciences (as in outlined by Derrida afflicts everything, text’ (Derrida, 1984: 158) in an original way discourse9 (Stone, 2004). Furthermore, as certain forms of social constructionism) including the body (Kirby, 1997: 53-56). to argue that ‘nature’ is not just a scene of Grosz explains: because this separation risks leaving Therefore she suggests that feminists cannot cultural inscription, it ‘both writes and is questions of scientific authority unchallenged, dismiss discourse on ‘sociobiology, cognitive written’ (Kirby, 1997: 61). In other words, if it ‘If women cannot be characterized in any failing to acknowledge the ‘phallocentric studies, and artificial intelligence’ on the basis is the case that objects are influenced by general way, if all there is to femininity is economy’ reproduced within it (Wilson, that they are essentialising and ‘politically culture so, for Kirby, is ‘culture’ influenced by socially produced, how can feminism be 1998). According to Wilson, if on the one offensive’ (see Spivak in Kirby, 1997: 160) ‘materiality’ (Kirby, 1997: 56). Although taken seriously? What justifies the hand, ‘scientific’ claims such as that of Simon because ‘the body as the scene of writing’ (an Kirby’s account of ‘matter’ as ‘the scene of assumption that women are oppressed le Vay ‘that homosexual and heterosexual image which again she takes from Derrida, writing’ is not immune to criticism8, it raises as a sex?’ (Grosz, 1998) identities have a neurobiological substrate’ 1974) is ‘an inscribing of all essentialisms, important questions about the politics of constitute neurocognitive matter as ‘self- even of the politically offensive’ (Kirby, 1997: ‘representation’ and its relation to ‘the An argument being made here for feminists present and originary’ (Wilson, 1998: 202-3), 160). Oppression, according to Kirby, may biological facts of the body’s existence’ not to refuse all forms of ‘essentialism’ on the other, conceptualisations of the body actually craft and shape the materiality of the (Kirby, 1997: 70). because this could simply mean the end of in purely constructionist terms effect a body through, for example, starvation, feminist politics itself (which would then only ‘displacement of biological presence’, which torture, long hours of low paid and exploited According to feminists, such as Stone, appear as another form of negative is ultimately counter-productive for feminism labour (see Kirby but also Cheah Pheng7 in moreover, the question of ‘nature’ cannot be essentialism) (in Schor and Weed, 1994: xiii). (Wilson, 1998: 203). For her, therefore, Threadgold, 2003). Consequently, although fully grasped from a constructionist approach Consequently, as previously noted (see feminists should not do away with questions Kirby would agree with Butler that the body is because this ignores how women’s ‘lived paragraph above on Kirby), attempts have of scientific authority but they should deal not ‘natural’ and/or ‘essential’ ‘as opposed to corporeal existence’ is in fact devalued (see been made not only to try to re-conceptualize with them, ‘not simply at those sites where culturally inscribed’, she refuses to see Stone, 2004: 13; but also see Schor and ‘essentialism’ (see again Stone, 2004; Fuss, it takes women as objects, but also in the ‘essentialism’ as intrinsically untenable. Weed, 1994; Grosz, 1998; Wilson, 1997/8). 1989; Schor and Weed, 1994; but also neutral zones, in those places where Instead, she sees essentialism not merely as From Stone’s perspective: Spivak’s notion of ‘strategic essentialism’, feminism appears to have no place and no prohibitive but also as enabling on the basis 1984/5: 184) but also to find productive political purchase’ (Wilson, 1998: 18-19). that the body is ‘“natural” and/or “essential” ‘Precisely because the way we inhabit our (although in no way ‘absolute’) points of For Wilson, this means engaging with the because indistinguishable from “culture”’ bodies is always culturally mediated, the connections between social constructionism domain of ‘the biological’ itself as a site of (Kirby in Deutscher, 1997, italics added). cultural devaluation of femininity and on the one hand, and biology and scientific complexity and eccentricity (see Wilson’s re- According to Kirby, in fact, ‘nature’ is not feminized corporality adversely affects outside culture but it is an active ‘telling women’s actual inhabitation of their 9 Although, not every feminist would necessarily agree with Stone’s suggestion that every type of ‘political essentialism’ is substance’, whose materiality needs to be bodies and their power for practical inherently unstable and, thus, that there is a need for a return to ontology or ‘realist essentialism’ (Stone, 2004). acknowledged and ‘heard’ (Kirby: 1997: 127). engagements with the world’ (Stone, 10 In fact, it seems fair to point out that it would be mistaken to think about Butler’s theory as ‘absolutely’ opposed to that of And she suggests that the way to confront 2004: 13). theorists such as Kirby or Wilson (see Kirby above and paragraphs on Wilson below). Many points of connections can be found between these theorists. In ‘Bodies that Matter’ Butler explicitly rejects the idea that ‘sexuality’ can be made or unmade at will (Butler, 1993: 94). Her performative understanding of discursive practices can be seen as an attempt to 7 Particularly, Cheah Pheng questions the practice of ‘re-signification’ asking whether it constitutes an adequate model of challenge the ‘unexamined habits of mind that grant language and other forms of power in determining our ontologies’ (in agency in a ‘neo-colonialist space’ where the very matter of the body ‘bears the instituted traces of the spacing and timing Barad, 2003). Moreover, both Wilson and Kirby acknowledge and make use of certain social constructionism insights to of imperialism’ (Pheng Cheah in Threadgold, 2003). develop their theories. However, by making their differences explicit, this essay hopes showing the limits of post-structural approaches in their engagement with ‘the biological’, while opening possibilities for ‘different’ understandings of ‘nature’, 8 Although Kirby poses some important questions regarding form, matter and their ‘accepted’ separability, it is unclear ‘the natural’ and consequently of ‘sexual difference’ than that conceived within strictly constructivist terms; although it whether her own approach successfully answers such questions. In particular, her strong reliance on deconstruction seems to acknowledges that there is no ‘original outside’ to which ‘we’ can return. circumscribe her own theoretical approach to certain type of resources, while foreclosing other possibilities which possibly could have enhanced her understanding of the nature/mind dichotomy (Reynolds, 2000). 10 The Question of ‘Nature’: What has Social Constructionism to offer Feminist Theory? The Question of ‘Nature’: What has Social Constructionism to offer Feminist Theory? 11 evaluation of Freud’s analysis of male neurobiological data’ without necessarily machine that thinks (Wilson, 1996, 1998: individual units function internally to hysteria, 2004). It means complicating ‘an accepting the dominant conceptualization of 109). However, as Wilson shows, Turing’s propagate and transform activity in the easy division between the political and the nature/matter as biologically determined model of ‘cognition’ is clearly achieved network and, as such, have no material stasis of “this neurological body” (Wilson, 2004: 13, 14). She says, ‘[t]his through a complete annihilation and representational status. Within this model, and the political and material malleability of preference for neurological analysis’ does not denigration of ‘the body’. As an example, she rules are not stored in a central nervous “the cultural body”’ (Wilson, 1998: 203). want to diminish other feminist cultural, points out that ‘[t]he Turing test is conducted system but are implicit in the structure of the social, linguistic, literary and historical analyses via written or couriered information between network. Knowledge is distributed rather In the introduction to her latest book, but open possibilities that do not foreclose the players: there is no bodily, visual or aural than local, and not locatable, either Psychosomatic: Feminism and the neurological those aspects of ‘biology’, which could contact between the participants’ as if the cognitively or anatomically (in Hollway, 2000). body, for example, Wilson looks at the enhance rather than underplay feminist body was an unimportant and unnecessary According to Wilson, connectionism offers hysterical body to argue that, although Freud’s understandings of the body (Wilson, 2004: 8). obstacle to the end result of the test (Wilson, modalities for breaching the separation idea of ‘conversion hysteria’ has proved very 1996, 1998: 109). It is as if for Turing, in between ‘the mind’ and ‘the body’ because productive for feminism, it has come at the Particularly, according to Wilson, feminists complete accordance to Descartes’ maxim, it shows that the brain’s functions and expenses of the ‘bio-logic’ (Wilson, 2004: 4). need research about ‘the nature of cognition ‘Cogito ergo sum’ (see Descartes, consciousness are far more complex than In particular, she says that ‘the preference for itself’ because it is there that the 1642/1971), ‘to think’ requires the complete can be explained by reductive notions of analyses of ideational contortion at the ‘disembodied nature of “thinking” itself’ disavowing of the body. However, Wilson biological determinism and genetic expenses of biological conversion suggests appears more clearly (Wilson, 1996; 1998: asks, what are the hidden desires that inform programming. It shows that ‘cognitive that the question of the body has yet to be 19). In other words, it is there that ‘nature’ this economy of thought? Is knowledge patterns are established differently in the posed as comprehensively as it could be’ and/or ‘the corporeal’ loses all its ‘power’ and ‘neutral’ as Turing would have us believe? Or course of individual histories’ (Scott, 2001). It (Wilson, 2004: 5). Consequently, ‘the becomes completely disavowed. Thus, in is the neutrality of knowledge achieved at the is via connectionism that, ‘the embodiment particularities of the muscles, nerves and ‘“Loving the Computer Cognition”, expense of ‘the body’ and/or of ‘nature’? of the psyche is enacted not through present organs in their hysterical state have remained Embodiment and the Influencing Machine’, cortical traces, but through the deferral and under-examined’ within feminist theorizing she analyses Alan Turing's (1950) Test on Clearly, for Wilson, knowledge is not neutral. difference of a material trace that is nowhere (Wilson, 2004: 4). This is why she suggests computing machinery and intelligence and, Instead, for her, ‘cognition as neutral or locatable’ (Wilson, 1998: 162). Her goal, that ‘rather than disregarding Freud at those by employing Irigaray’s notion of morphology, dispassionate computation’ is a myth however, is not to substitute Turing’s notion moments where he invokes biology, we may she shows that his idea of cognition is produced ‘according to the demands of a of cognition with a purely ‘feminine’ one be better served by a consideration of the premised on ‘the expulsion of the corporeal’ male imaginary and morphology’, which because, according to Wilson, ‘there is no data he lays before us’ (Wilson, 2004: 12). and it is achieved at the expense of ‘the respects only ‘containment, fixity and natural or pre-discursive psychical fluidity to Even though she recognizes that the body’. More specifically, for Wilson, Turing’s certitude’ (Wilson, 1996). She says, ‘cognition which our formulations could return’. Rather, biological is not a neutral domain, she notion of cognition is produced by ‘the is the projection of the masculine desire to be she wants ‘to disrupt the containment and believes that perhaps feminists have dismissed containment of the corporeal to the free of the body’; ‘it is simply a reinstantiation certainty of this (supposed) neutral cognition’ it too quickly (Wilson, 2004). Thus, for feminine, and its subsequent displacement’ of the Cartesian desire for the kernel of man (Wilson, 1996) in order to produce instance, she points out that ‘hysterics do (Wilson, 1996). The Turing Test consists in to be pure intellectuality’ (Wilson, 1996). knowledge of the body as interacting with indeed suffer from reminiscences’ as firstly testing a number of men and women in Thus, taking up but also radically expanding and also exceeding the possibilities of the exposed by Freud and Breuer, but that relation to ‘the thinking capacity’ of a Irigaray’s challenge about the impossibility of physical parameters within which it operates symptoms, such as blindness, physical pain computer to see if the machine is really separating ‘the body’ from ‘the mind’ on the (Wilson, 1998). Ultimately, for Wilson, the and incessant cough, which deeply affect the capable of thinking. If the interrogator is basis that this separation ‘enables the aim of feminism is to develop a theory of body, are also caused by hysteria and cannot unable to distinguish the machine’s answers reproduction of the phallocentric privileging ‘mind and body’ that takes into account be simply disregarded (Wilson, 2004: 5). For from the answers of the man, then this of male representations of subjectivity’ (and, developments within the natural sciences her, feminists ‘can be deeply and happily particular machine is said to have passed the consequently, of ‘femininity’) (Irigaray quoted rather than disregarding them a priori complicit with biological explanation’ and Turing Test. The machine whose answer is in Pateman and Grosz, 1986: 136), Wilson (Wilson, 1998). In her view: ‘more affectionately involved with indistinguishable from that of the man is the proposes a ‘connectionist model’, in which 12 The Question of ‘Nature’: What has Social Constructionism to offer Feminist Theory? The Question of ‘Nature’: What has Social Constructionism to offer Feminist Theory? 13
‘Critiques premised on a primary simply socially and linguistically constructed ‘essential-sing’ ‘nature’, ‘the natural’ and ‘the oppositional relation to the sciences or by proposing a theory of ‘the body’ as feminine’, feminists cannot fully explain the premised on anti-biologism, anti- indistinguishable from ‘the mind’. For Wilson, limitations of the subject/object dichotomy essentialism, or anti-utilitarism are losing in fact, the idea of the mind as separable for other oppressed bodies but, paradoxically, their critical and political purpose – not from the body is a ‘masculinist’ one; one that seem to rely on it for their claim of objectivity, necessarily because they are wholly presumes a certain kind of embodiment, on the other, an emphasis on ‘culture’ risks mistaken, but because they have relied which ‘fits with certain masculinist leaving ‘the naturalness’ of ‘the body’, its on, and reauthorized, a separation presumptions about psychological morphology, ‘flesh’, desires and history, between the inside and the outside, the functioning’ (Wilson, 1996). unquestioned. Particularly, according to static and the changeable, the natural authors such as Wilson, it is those aspects of and the political, the chromosomal and In conclusion, social constructionism offers ‘biology’ that are most ‘physical’ and/or the cultural’ (Wilson, 1998: 200). feminists means to challenge the idea that ‘carnal’ which are often under-theorized women are inferior to men due to their within contemporary feminist theorizing. To Hence, paradoxically, feminists accepting natural characteristics (an idea held by almost emphasize ‘the biological’ and/or ‘the these premises risk naturalizing ‘material every Western philosopher prior to feminism). natural’, however, is not a return to a pre- processes’, which they should instead be In particular, the idea that identities are feminist understanding of the naturalness of exploring (Rosengarten, 2004). As an socially and linguistically constructed enables ‘sex’ (and ‘the body’) as opposed to ‘gender’ alternative, Wilson proposes a body that is a critique of dominant hegemonic (and ‘culture’). Rather, it may be seen as an produced ‘by contingent impressions conceptions of ‘heterosexuality’, ‘sex’, effort toward ‘alternative’ conceptions of (radically individualized) which mix sensory ‘gender’ and ‘race’ as ‘natural’ and/or ‘matter’ that take into account, but also responses and unconscious fantasies ‘essential’. Their ‘essentiality’ is displaced and interrogate, both developments within the (registered neurologically) in ways that make the cultural process of symbolisation through social and the natural sciences in the nonsense both of genetic determinism and which these concepts are naturalised is awareness that to simply re-inscribe it into mind/body separations’ (Wilson quoted in problematized enabling a different the cultural ‘is the monist, or logocentric, Scott, 2001). Although, given restrictions of conception of identity as performed or gesture par excellence’ (Grosz quoted in space, a full assessment of her proposition is produced through action. According to this Wilson, 1998: 66). Ultimately, in fact, ‘nature’ not possible within this paper, without doubt view, we are not natural givens but produced and/or ‘matter’ are not outside of culture nor Wilson provides important theoretical insights by signifying practices and ideologies, are they simply ‘cultural’, but they are sites of to the question of ‘nature’ from a different discourses motivated or determined by considerable complexity, whose perspective than that put forward within power, and our identities are contingent understanding is neither self-evident nor strictly social constructionist terms. On the politico-cultural and historical constructions. uncomplicated and should be ‘included’ in one hand, she questions the idea that the However, despite these important theoretical the problematic of identity. domain of politics is the public as opposed to contributions to the question of identity, the private by strongly suggesting not only what this paper demonstrates is that that ‘the private is political’11 but that ‘the attempting to re-construct ‘nature’ from the natural’ is also political and worth point of view of discourse risks reinforcing consideration (Hird, 2004; see also Butler in the nature/culture dichotomy which it was Benhabib, 1995); while, on the other, she one of the main aims of post-structuralist puts into question the idea that identity is theory to displace. If on the one hand, by
11 The idea that the ‘personal and/or private is political’ was first elaborated by ‘second wave’ feminists during the 1960s and 70s and it enabled feminists to enter issues of political contestation, such as domestic violence, domestic labour, abortion to name just a few, which were hitherto believed to lie outside of politics. 14 The Question of ‘Nature’: What has Social Constructionism to offer Feminist Theory? The Question of ‘Nature’: What has Social Constructionism to offer Feminist Theory? 15
AKNOWLEDGMENTS Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble, London: Flaxe, J. in Nicholson L. (eds) (1990) Grosz.E. (not dated) ‘Interview with Elisabeth I would like to thank Dr Kate Nash for Routledge. Feminism/ Postmodernism, London: Grosz’ by Ausch, R., Randal D. and Perez, L. reading and commenting on this paper. The Routledge. (first accessed, 26-11-2004), at publication of this article would have not Butler, J. (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the
Irigaray, L. (1985) Speculum of the Other Reynolds, J. (2000) ‘Kirby, Merleau-Ponty, and Spivak, G. C. (1988) Can the Subaltern ELISA FIACCADORI Woman, Ithaca and New York: Cornell the Question of an Embodied Deconstruction’, Speak? In Marxism and the Interpretation Elisa has a BA in Sociology (First Class University Press. (first accessed, 28-12-2004), at of Culture, London: Macmillan. Honors) and an MA in Social Research,