30 RüdigerKunow
does perpetuate material conditions of oppression or discrimination.
This is a point on which Troy Duster insists vis-à-vis constructivist
critique,inhiscaseofrace:"[i]tisamistaketodiscardracejustbecause
racial categories do not map exactly onto biological processes.... The
task is to determine how the social meanings of race can affect
biological outcomes like varying rates of cancer and heart failure" (qtd.
in Jones 614; Holloway 83, 90). These latter illnesses are showcase
examples of what might be called bio-intersectionality, which surfaces
in similar ways also in gendered contexts, where women are subject-ed
not only to pervasive sexism but are also encountering material hazards
to their biological well-being ranging from illnesses associated with
reproduction (death in childbirth, diseases affecting the reproductive
organs) to physical violations, all of which have their basis in the
biologicalspecificitiesoftheirbodies.
Insisting on biological specificities of racialized or gendered bodies,
as is done in the present argument, must, however, not be read as a
theoreticalabout-faceinthedirectionofanunquestioningre-assertionof
a biological determinism or essentialism in the fields of race or gender.
Rather, in the absence of generally accepted definitions of both terms,
the purpose of the following argument is to trace the cultural processes
which made the recourse to biology or the idea of a biological
substratumseemsoappealing,soplausible,thatraceorgendercontinue
to be projected upon actual persons in specific historical situations and
constellations. In other words, rather than returning to biology as
foundational feature in thinking about race and gender, the argument
unfoldedherewillfocusonhow,inbothinstances,thefigurativeenergy
ofthediscursivefieldofbiologyhasbeenapowerfulmediumtorender
human beings differentially present, at times even highly visibly
different, and thus vulnerable, in the public sphere. Without
acknowledgmentoftheembodiednatureofhumanbeings,anynotionof
aracializedorgendered"I"or"me"wouldbeincomplete.
underlying determining agent (the mode of capitalist production, in his case)
which is not materially "present" in any way. Instead, "the whole existence of
the structure consists of its effects.. ." (Althusser and Balibar189). Applied to
the present problem, this means that matters biological regardless of their
ontologicalstatuscanbesaidtobe"there"onlyasa"presenceofthestructurein
itseffects"(AlthusserandBalibar186).