InConclusive:HumanBiologyandtheWorkofCulturalCritique 435
can also be a terrain of collective abhorrence and abjection as public
reactions to cancer or HIV-AIDS or, more recently, to Ebola have
demonstrated.Biologyisthusthestageforthesharedsusceptibilitiesor
dependencies inherent in humans' collective existence. There is a
Hegelian echo in such reflections. In a fragment of his Jenaer
Systementwürfe,Hegel contemplates on the fact that collectives and the
relations between them are formed around the fulfillment of elementary
necessities:
DieBefriedigungderBedürfnisseisteineallgemeineAbhängigkeitaller
voneinander ... Das Bedürfnis und die Arbeit, in diese Allgemeinheit
erhoben,bildetsofürsichineinemgroßenVolkeinungeheuresSystem
vonGemeinschaftlichkeitundgegenseitigerAbhängigkeit...
(Thesatisfactionofneedsproducesageneraldependenceofallonall...
This need and labor in a general sense in a large population creates a
gigantic system of communality and mutual dependence). (Je naer
Systementwürfe229,323-24;mytrans.)One need not unduly stretch Hegel's argument to discern in the
"needs" the biological necessities and dependencies which bring human
beingsintorelationshipswithoneanother.
It makes eminent sense, therefore, and especially for cultural
critique, to read biology more broadly as afigureforthecollective, for
the often un- or underrepresented world which human beings have in
common,andfromwhichtheycannotdisengagethemselves,justasthey
cannot disengage themselves from their bodies. In cultural critique, it
has often been argued that a critical language to describe such a
collective existence does not exist or no longer exists, that all we have
are "so many linguistic experiments for designating an impossible
collective totality... as unimaginable as it is real" (Jameson,
Antinomies257). The material presented in the preceding chapters
suggeststo methathumanbiologymayindeedbesuchalanguage,ata
time when other languages of the collective such as progress, history,
class have been dismissed and de-legitimated. Such an assumption is
madeevenmoresuggestiveifwebearinmindthatbiologydoesindeed
havealotincommonwithlanguage,evenbeyondthemodishtalkabout
genesasthebookoflife.Biology'soperationsfollowaspecificsystemic
logic, they bring people together or set them apart, only that biology