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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Claire Blencowe
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In the 1970s and 80s a strong opposition and anxiety towards biological and naturalising knowledges was the norm in feminist discourse. In the past decades the certainties of that ‘antibiologism’ have been challenged, in part because of a new recognition of the role of contingency in both biological determination and biological-science. What seems to have survived the shift is a set of normative assumptions concerning the role of determinacy and contingency (or being-born and becoming) in the political implications of ontological claims: an assumed political valorisation of contingency. This paper challenges those assumptions. It draws attention to the embrace of contingency and processuality on the part of supremacist biopolitical discourse, and suggests the need to think again about the politics of contingency and becoming (in constructivist as well as biologistic discourses). Focusing on the issue of racism and supremacist-specification, the paper takes a genealogical look at ‘second-wave’ feminist antibiologism. Monique Wittig’s materialist feminist attack on naturalising ideology and ‘the myth of woman’ provides the (idealtypical) historical example. The paper draws attention to curious absences in Wittig’s (and Rosalind Rosenberg’s) anti-biologistic statements concerning early twentieth century biologistic feminism: the absence of a critique of eugenics, racism and supremacism. Arguably the condemnation of biology as a conservative ‘ideology of the status quo’ created masks for biopolitical ontology, obscuring the progressive, dynamic, processual character of biologism and of modern racism. Whilst dislodging some powers of biologistic discourse, feminist anti-biologism might also have played a part in facilitating the revitalisation of biopolitical racism within the constructivist culturalist rubric. The aim of the paper is not to critique ‘second-wave’ feminism from the perspective of contemporary scholarship, but to help generate new ways of thinking and feeling about the role of ontology, contingency and temporality in the present politics of classification.
Author(s): Blencowe C
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Theory Culture & Society
Year: 2011
Volume: 28
Issue: 3
Pages: 3 - 27
Print publication date: 01/05/2011
ISSN (print): 0263-2764
ISSN (electronic): 1460-3616
Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263276410396918
DOI: 10.1177/0263276410396918
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