InConclusive:HumanBiologyandtheWorkofCulturalCritique 433
If the humanities [sic] has a future as cultural criticism, and cultural
criticism has a task at the present moment, it is no doubt to return us to
the human where we do not expect to find it, in its frailty and at the
limitsofitscapacitytomakesense.(PrecariousLife151)If one accepts this obligation, how does one theorize, how does one
write about biology and culture? This general and daunting question
unfoldsintoanumberofequallyweightyproblemareas:howisbiology
(to be) positioned vis-à-vis the paradigm which currently seems to
obsess much of cultural critique, difference? Does biology ground
difference(s), and if so, which ones? How does biology relate to
paradigms like race and gender, to capitalist globalization, to
postcoloniality—fields of inquiry which have become oftentimes
dismissive of biological models? How does biology relate to ecology?
How do biological endowments—and new technologies of changing
them—register in individual and collective fantasies, and also in the
shared world of social beings? To address these questions promises a
widerangeof interesting new material for Humanities research butalso
makes demands on the critic him- or herself, demands for which Seyla
Benhabib's term "analytical empathy" (5) provides a convenient
signpost. The empathy she is calling for manifests itself in biology-
focused critique, first of all, in reserving judgment about the personal
conductandpracticesamongpeoplewithbiologicalendowmentswhich
the collective regards as "problematic." Secondly, "analytical empathy"
compelscriticstoaddressquestionsofhumanlifeintime,ofhuman-to-
human relationships, of the norms underwriting these relationships, and
questionsoftheworthoflifeinallitsformsinsidethepublicmanifold.
These questions are strategic sites where epistemological obligations
become ethical ones, and they go to the core of cultural critique. The
present volume has attempted to address some of these questions—
without,however,settlingforasingle,definitiveanswer.
FiguresoftheCollective:HumanBiologyasCulturalIdiomandIssue
The analytical trajectory and the theoretical engagements in the
variouschaptersofthisvolumehavethusbeencommittedtotracingthe
operations and the "place of life across political, social, cultural, and
aestheticdiscourses"(GuyerandKeller229),demonstratinginthisway