38 RüdigerKunow
The en-gendered biology of women (whether in sex or gender) is
thus in Butler's influential theorizing conceived asa series of self-
actualizingandself-concealingconstructswhichmanifestthemselvesin
performative representations. These representations, repeated or, as she
would say, iterated over time, then materialize and stabilize the social
and cultural identity of women as the "second" gender. Thus, "there is
no reference to a pure body which is not at the same time a further
formationofthatbody"inthesocialandculturalmanifold(Bodies10).
The assumption that women's biological endowment is lived and
understood in essentially culturalist terms does not, Butler and her
followers keep insisting, amount to neglecting the trenchant and
oppressive material effects to which this endowment is subjected. In
fact, the epistemic commitment in much of the critical work by second-
wave feminists has been to bring together gender and biology in novel
and empowering ways. Coming from this context, there has been a vast
bodyofworkonmorenarrowlybiologicalmatterssuchasmenstruation,
reproductive choices and risks, bodily aging, and more recently also on
genetics, all of which seek to arrive at a better understanding of the
social and cultural determinations of the biological processes going on
in women's bodies. In addition, feminism's engagements with
colonialism,ethnicity,intersectionality,andqueertheorymustbenamed
here (Ahmed, Berlant, Holloway).^29 Whether or not the biology-culture
divide has been successfully bridged in this work cannot be determined
herewithsufficientauthority.Whatisclear,though,isthatawarenessof
thisdividehasnotabatedbothpracticallyandtheoretically.
Rather, even while human biology constituted in gender is being
perceived as a construction site, and a busy construction site at that, it
has in recent years also become "a site for scandal" (Schneider 245, cf.
242). It was at least in part as a reaction against the foundational
assumptions of the social and/or discursive constructedness of the
(female) body that a widespread critique against feminist textualism or
culturalism has been launched. "By now,the idea of social construction
''essentially cultural, rather than biological bases'' that result from differential
treatment(28-29).
29
Aside from the authors just mentioned, Iris Marion Young's collectionOn
Female Experience: "ThrowingLikea Girl"and OtherEssays(2005) has been
tremendouslyhelpfulformyunderstandingofthiscontext.