Re: AUT: critiquing biological determinism/ideology of difference

["cwright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Just out of curiosity, what is the point of all of this?  Seriously, first
ask yourselves why this is such a hot topic.

I know that I have found that biological determinists tend to come with a
political agenda, one which says 'What is, is all that can be.'  that's my
concern.  They tend to read consistent (ie non-social, transhistorical)
behaviour differences into the sexes, into 'races' (which do not even
biologically exist), etc.  That differences between men and women exist, at
a biological level, and therefore in some way at other levels merely begs
the real questions.  That does not make the piece you read 'innacurate', in
so far as it reflects how people may really be in this society.  But it
tells us nothing about how that 'being' might become something else, how it
might be transformed or transformative, instead of fixed.  In that light,
science itself needs to be rigorously critiqued as ideological in its very
presuppositions, methods, etc.  Science is always capitalist science, even
where it discovers new 'facts' about the world.  Indeed, science (as part
and parcel of capital) may have become the prerequisite to communism, but in
one sense only in so far as it has created a kind of material substratum of
knowledge that stands in consflict to it as a fetishizing social practice
and therefore a practice of power.

So is sexism innate?  Is femal social subordination innate?  Is there such a
thing as male superiority?  In a society based on non-exploitative,
non-oppressive relations, will there be any particular reason to imagine
that sex differences will tremendously effect the possible range of choices
or of human dignity, social contribution, personal growth, etc?  Is sex
destiny in any meaningful sense?

At the same time, why shouldn't a society predicated upon gendering
(Fortunadi's book The Arcane of Reproduction is wonderful on this account by
showing how capital needs the current differentiation of men and women to
appear 'natural) and the deformation of men and women by the atrophying/frag
menting of their humanity into sex-bound roles, consistently produce results
in tests which validate this?  Why shouldn't science, with its bag of
preconseptions, not reproduce social relations as 'facts', as 'objective
findings'?

After all, men and women are crippled and deformed in this society.  They
are arrogated to fragmented roles whic are supposedly biological, in which
biology has been socially rendered as an imperative.  The concern with
biology is a concern with showing that biology is destiny, and I am so happy
to say that it simply is not.  After that, our task is simply pedagogical
explanation through a critique of science, through a kind of
counter-science.

The pure social constructivists or 'tabula rasa' types are no better, btw,
just different.  But that is not the popular ideological axe right now, the
resuscitation of biological determinism, creationism, and eugenics
(exemplified in sociobiology and 'The Bell Curve') may or may not go hand in
hand with post-structuralism and deconstruction.  I doubt that you would get
agreement, although Michael is, IMO, correct to point out that the elevation
of differance, which (French po-mo term) goes back to Nietzsche, who most
certainly ascribed to eugenics, racialism, a certain conception (not always
consistent) that biology is destiny (for example, The Geneaology of Morality
and the eagles and lambs discussion), fits all to well with this biological
determinism.  The question remains whether or not differance necessarily
gives rise to it.  I think it does only because the absoluteness of
difference, the glorification of fragmentation, is the philosophical
expression of commodity relations gone mad.  (Opinion!)

You might try reading a variety of works by Stephen J. Gould, Richard
Lewontin (for the genetics side), Leon Kamin (for the psychology side), and
Steven Rose (neurobiologist, I believe) and the sources they site for a
useful discussion of this material.  "Biology as Ideology", "Not In Our
Genes", "The Ontogeny of Information", "The Triple Helix", "The Making of
Memory", "Lifeline", "Molecules and Minds", "Science and Politics of I.Q."
all come to mind.  Most of this is popularly accessible, but not all of it,
and the research it is based on is definitely not easily accessible.  In all
cases, however, they neither deny biology's role nor reduce us to it.

Also, the work of writers like Sylvia Federici, Fortunadi, both Dalla
Costas, Selma James, and others should give you a sense of the production of
gender (masculinity and femininity, roles, etc.) in class terms and as a
historical process of violence and not as some biological given.  It is the
best antidote to this shit.

Remind me to be interested in MRI scans of the brain after the overthrow of
capital, though I suspect it will not be of much interest at that point.

Cheers,
Chris





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