430 RüdigerKunow
On a more cautionary note, I want to register the fact that putting
biologysquarelyatthecenterofculturalcritique,asIhaveattemptedto
do here, is a somewhat rare, if not idiosyncratic gesture in the current
critical dispensation. Cultural critique and the Humanities in general
have over the last decades shown a determined and programmatic
interest in what refuses the systematizations of political, social, even
theoretical concepts. Coming from different theoretical and cultural
commitments, two of the most prominent traditions in contemporary
critique, the Frankfurt School and deconstructionism, have both
launched remarkably similar critiques of the injustices Enlightenment
rationalism has visited on the particular, the individual, the specific, in
human beings. Biology, on the other hand, in the uses to which it has
beenput,hasagravitationalpulltowardsthedomainsofthegeneral,the
trans-individual, or, in less lofty language, the collective. As in-formed
figure of human life, biology is what humans hold in common—a
patrimony, even if often a neglected or disavowed one. Neglect or
disavowal of this fact have been a characteristic of much contemporary
critique, especially among the French-inspired "High Theory"
impresarios of linguistic constructivism. As Janet Wolff has
convincingly argued: "Poststructural theory and discourse theory, in
demonstrating the discursive nature of the social, operate as license to
denythesocial"(711),includingasocialityinwhichhumanbiologyisa
formidableinfluence.
Inageneralway,allthisistruealsoofmyowndiscipline,American
Studies,wheremyinquiryintotheculturesthatbiologymakescomesat
a time of intense irritation, a moment of disciplinary "melancholy"
(Hardt19),when
words and concepts in American and ethnic studies [are] moving too
quickly, starting out as exciting tools full of potential, then rapidly
becoming familiar fashions, then getting quickly tiresome, and then
beingprematurelysweptintothedustbinofhistory(Deloria19).And so I want to resist the temptation here of inserting my own
project into the unending series of "paradigm dramas" (Wise) in
American Studies, for example by making claims for a new turn, this
timea"biologicalturn"(DavidandMorris;Wald).NorwouldIsuggest