42 RüdigerKunow
particular individuals or institutions" (Clarke et al., "Theoretical and
SubstantiveIntroduction"5).
From the anti-universalist perspective shared by most race and
gender theorists, the biology of human life and the human body—as I
also hope to have shown—is a feature that troubles theoretical closure.
Hence,thesystematicinterrogationintheU.S.-Americanacademysince
the1980sofgenderedandracializedembodimentsintheformofsocial
and cultural constructivisms made it possible to achieve theoretical
closure by actsde-naturalizing the biological domain—de-naturalizing
here understood in the double sense of moving biology away from
nature into social and cultural praxis and also of depriving it of its
former status of "natural" self-evidence, in the sense of being given by
"Mother Nature." The all-out critique of racial or gender "naturalisms"
has predictably exposed the noxious effects ofbiosocial positionings
(bio-intersectionality) and biocultural semiosis, but, as I hope to have
alsoshown,itrunstheriskofthrowingthebiologicalbabyoutwiththe
naturalist bathwater. Recent work in the fields of race and gender
studies, some of which I addressed above, has reminded us that the
presumed divide between a biology-based essentialism and a social or
cultural constructivism is oftentimes less strict and impermeable as
assumed by the latter: "the biological dimensions... cannot easily be
extricated from the socio-cultural settings in which they are known and
experienced"andviceversa(Lupton173).^32
Tothis diagnosis which I very much sympathize with I simply want
to add that the settings invoked here do not determine the biological
dimensions. Critical work by Ebert, Giroux, Saldívar and in guarded
waysalsobyButlerbearswitnesstoanenlargedandintensifiedsenseof
biology as structure and knowledge,sponsored by reflectionson human
embodiment and the unavoidable connectivities between self and other
selves. This in its turn then invites a more sustained reflection on how
biology might be understood in novel ways, not as aproperty(real or
imagined) of a given organism so much but as a (name for) a
relationality, initiating, catalyzing, generating contacts, engagements,
32
Relatedworkisdoneunderthelabelof"BiologicalFoundationalism";cf.also
Wadham, Ben, Jason Pudsey, and Ross Boyd.Culture and Education. Frenchs
Forest:PearsonEducationAustralia,2007.Print.