432 RüdigerKunow
Over the last years, some critics have begun to turn to biology and the
biosphere more generally, often in order to make claims for the
continuing relevance of the Humanities. In a number of recent
interventions, in conference papers (see the programs of recent MLA
conventions), in essay collections and special issues of academic
journals (cf. the January 2016 South Atlantic Quarterlynumber on
"WelfareandPrecarity"),culturalcritiquehasbeguntoexploreaterrain
beyond the by now jaded pleasures of exposing once again the cultural
constructedness of everything, race, gender, and ultimately human life.
Instead, the analytical focus in this broad and expanding range of new
biology-focused research is on the embodied condition of human life
and its susceptibilities to natural and human-made hazards. And it is
certainly no coincidence that in the Humanities—across its various
disciplines—work has emerged that addresses, oftentimes in an
interdisciplinary way, a broad range of bodily susceptibilities, past and
present. I have made reference above to Henry Giroux's work on "the
biopolitics of disposability," Elizabeth Povinelli's "economies of
abandonment"orSaskiaSassen'sstudyofthelogicsof"expulsion."The
bibliography of this volume lists more such projects. They represent in
my viewa return of the theoretically repressed: the physicality and
materialityofhumanlife.
It is as yet too early to assess the relative merit of this new
orientationorre-orientation.Whatcanandneedstobesaidatthispoint,
however,isthatregardlessoftheoftenwidely differentcriticalagendas
animatingthesevariousprojects,togethertheypointtonewdirectionsin
culturalcritique.IfAmericanStudiesandotherformsofculturalcritique
have for a long time replaced natural objects with linguistic objects, the
projectstowhichIalludedandwhichalsoanimatemyownworkinthis
book go in the opposite direction. They are marking a movement from
one set of paradigms (language, discourse, text) to another (body,
biology,susceptibilities,dependencies)andthustowardare-assertionof
the materiality, even the vital agency of natural objects and especially
human life. What such a changeover signals in my view is a renewed
concern in the Humanities with their ur-theme, the "human," and with
the conditions for its continuing and sustainable existence. Such
concernsarereflected,forexample,inJudithButler'sspiritedassertion: