Introduction:BiologizingCulture/CulturingBiology 27
contemporaryculturaltheoryinitsmajoritywouldargue,thebiologyof
human beings never comes to us in "natural," un-interpreted form.
Human life is always already socially and culturally invested with
meaning. As the extensive and controversial history of this investment
shows, the biological substratum of both terms has often been
eclipsed—insocialpraxisbutalsoincertainformsofculturalcritique—
bytheassumptionstowhichitgaverise.^19
From an epistemological point of view, race and gender can be
classified as portmanteau concepts, and in this they are like "biology."
As such, they tend toward the typical (see the inquiry on the "Non-
Normatively Human," below), foreclosing some differences in order to
highlightothers.Becauseofthatandsincetheyalsooperateonthebasis
of referential typicalities such that all and only all members of one race
or gender are projected to share a set of biological characteristics, they
perform insistent, even sinister social and cultural work on the basis of
"natural or self-evident categories" (Sollors on race, qtd. in Frazier
163)—that is biological categories—for social and cultural
differentiation.Discoursesracializingorgenderingpersonsaretherefore
full of expressions of typicality or generalization, implicit or explicit
versions of the word "all": in counter-hegemonic ways, literary texts
(^19) It is a generally accepted proposition (shared here) that there is no solid
scientific evidence for "race." However, recent advances in genetics have
producednewbiologicalontologiesofrace(Jones621)whosevaliditycannotbe
determined here. On this (spurious?) basis, dissident, i.e., biology-based
perspectives are occasionally re-asserted: "because the biological species
concept remains epistemologically useful, some biologists and philosophers use
it to defend a racial ontology that is 'biologically informed but non-essentialist,'
one that is vague, non-discrete, and related to genetics, genealogy, geography,
and phenotype" (Sesardic 146). An example of this is Ian Hacking who has
highlightedthebiomedicalside,arguingthatAfricanAmericansaremorelikely
tofindabonemarrowmatchfromapoolofAfricanAmericandonorsthanfrom
a pool of white donors. Thus, he defends the practice of soliciting African
American bone marrow donors, even though this may provide fodder to racist
groupswhodefendanessentialistandhierarchicalconceptionofbiologicalrace
(Hacking 102-16). Cf. also Goodman, Alan H. "Why Genes Don't Count (for
Racial Differences in Health)."American Journal of Public Health90.11
(2000):1699-702.Print.