University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Masters Theses Dissertations and Theses November 2016 In Theory, There's Hope: Queer Co-(m)motions of Science and Subjectivity Cordelia Sand University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2 Part of the Feminist Philosophy Commons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, Philosophy of Science Commons, and the Science and Technology Studies Commons Recommended Citation Sand, Cordelia, "In Theory, There's Hope: Queer Co-(m)motions of Science and Subjectivity" (2016). Masters Theses. 443. https://doi.org/10.7275/w6yf-r827 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/443 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. 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IN THEORY, THERE’S HOPE FOR THE FUTURE: QUEER CO-(M)MOTIONS OF SCIENCE AND SUBJECTIVITY A Thesis Presented by CORDELIA SAND Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Geography September 2016 Geosciences © Copyright by Cordelia Sand 2016 All Rights Reserved IN THEORY, THERE’S HOPE FOR THE FUTURE: QUEER CO-(M)MOTIONS OF SCIENCE AND SUBJECTIVITY A Master of Science Thesis Presented by CORDELIA SAND Approved as to style and content by: ____________________________________ Eve Vogel, Chair ____________________________________ Angela Willey, Member ____________________________________ Stuart Kauffman, Member ____________________________________________ Julie Brigham-Grette, Department Head Geosciences ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Writing this thesis has been a nomadic endeavor, in more ways than those reflected spatially by my following far-flung thanks. First, I recognize my wondrous and diverse committee, Eve Vogel, Angie Willey, and Stuart Kauffman, for the courage to take on this project, and for then patiently sticking with me through its prolonged completion. My thanks also go to the UMass Geography department for respecting the various personal and medical challenges that came up along the way. Secondly, I thank the guardian angels who traveled with me, figuratively, as a sort of relay team who fostered my travels through both geographical and intellectual spaces of research and writing. Accordingly, my appreciations get dispersed across these lines of flight. Imagine, if you will, the greatest coffeeshop for getting work done, Flightpath in Austin, Texas. This place made my cross- country drives worth it. Many pages of writing came into existence thanks to Regina's special concoction of Italian soda that kept me fueled by all that extra cherry intensity. Returning to where these journeys began, though, takes me to New Paltz, NY, to Kate Dvorkin and Charles Kutler, who opened their beautiful home and tranquil treehouse meditation room to my mini-writing retreats, including unlimited access to the contents of their refrigerator! On the road again, my thanks go to several who, sheltering me, weathered my myopic immersions in this project: Claire Brault and Ann Ferguson in Massachusetts, Lisa Murphy in Virginia, Jenny Morrison in Missouri, Nelson Cammack in Colorado, and all those in Austin, Texas who, hardly knowing me, generously offered substantive support: Michael Esposito, in whose backyard apartment equipped with big desk, outdoor shower, and his kindnesses I felt as comfortably productive as at any time; MaryBeth Eastwood, whose cheerful and regular chiropractic adjustments kept the blood flowing between brain stem and extremities; Andrea Dehne, who loaned me her larimar necklace, its large stone delicately set in wound copper, that I might benefit from its calming energy in the last stretches of writing; and Douglas Paris White, who, unasked, showed up to park his Pynchon-reading body on iv my sofa as a silent, supportive presence while I pushed through the final wee hours, at last, to push the send button. Last and far from least, I owe especial and long-held thanks to Lee Zimmerman in Brooklyn, who indefatigably remained loyal to my efforts, buoyed my flagging spirits, and was consistently available to help with last minute editorial emergencies. I might also mention my respect for Alexander Sand, who brought an equanimity and confidence to my completing this work; he never questioned whether his mom would ever finally stop the research and finish the writing. This thesis is a broad and complex investigation. What follows just scratches the surface, a wisp of a white mark on soft slate, prone to vanish on contact with water. This is a very rough draft of thought on matters I would wish to become ongoing prescient considerations of all of us simple humans. We are miraculously fortunate to only gingerly and contingently experience this elegant life and planet, if only for an awkward moment. v ABSTRACT IN THEORY, THERE’S HOPE FOR THE FUTURE: QUEER CO-(M)MOTIONS OF SCIENCE AND SUBJECTIVITY SEPTEMBER 1, 2016 CORDELIA SAND, B.A., NEW YORK UNIVERSITY M.S., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Eve Vogel Given the state of the planet at present —specifically, the linked global ecological and economic crises that conjure dark imaginings and nihilistic actualities of increasing resource depletion, poisonings, and wide-scale sufferings and extinctions—I ask What might we hope now? What points of intervention offer possibility for transformation? At best, the response can only be partial. The approach this thesis takes initiates from specific pre-discursive assumptions. The first understands current conditions as having been produced, and continuing to be so, through practices that enact and sustain neoliberal relations. Secondly, these practices are expressive of a subjectivity tied to a Cartesian worldview, which, therefore, needs to be interrupted at its foundational roots. Thirdly, the scaffolding that supports this subjectivity draws on Newtonian science and neo-Darwinian narratives deemed to be natural law and, therefore, ontological, immutable reality. Contrary to modernist thinking, I premise that these two strains, subjectivity and science, are neither autonomous nor ontological, but that they are materially and contingently integral. Finally, this thesis presumes that life-affirming trajectories are, in fact, desired. vi An integral framing of science and subjectivity provides a productive method of feminist science studies analysis and theorization. Observing the capitalist Western social imaginary through this lens reveals its philosophical and scientific infrastructures to be outdated and deteriorating. Observing how emerging scientific narratives in quantum physics and systems- biology intersect with marginalized theories in process-philosophy and subjectivity reveals a life- affirming imaginary of difference, one that arrests nihilism and sets ethical trajectories in motion. Certain, though not all, percepts of feminist new materialism engage twentieth and twenty-first century sciences successfully to show that ethicality matters. Though many questions remain, this points auspiciously towards the possibility for a transformed politics of justice. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................................. iv ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... vi LIST of FIGURES ........................................................................................................................... x INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1. WHY ŽIŽEK IS MISERABLE AND ROSI IS NOT ................................................................ 46 Philosophers’ Affect .................................................................................................................. 48 Trouble in Paradise .................................................................................................................... 52 2. WHAT IS EARTH? ................................................................................................................... 61 What Is a Scientific Object? ...................................................................................................... 62 Autopoiesis and Some Other Science ........................................................................................ 70 Re-narrating Earth ...................................................................................................................... 76 3. MEMORY I. THE MONSTER IN OUR MIDST: Science narrates subjectivity ..................... 79 Advanced Capitalism and the Genetic Social Imaginary .......................................................... 83 Telos as Memory ........................................................................................................................ 87 Darwin’s Subjectivity ................................................................................................................ 99 Putting Kant and Darwin in Perspective .................................................................................. 106 The In-between .......................................................................................................................