so, with that in mind, an argument nonetheless, since we all take up different positions depending on what we think the stakes are:
rob wrote:
> I THINK NATURAL TENDENCIES ARE AT PLAY IN THE ENSEMBLE OF HUMAN
RELATIONS.
> Just because I don't know exactly how, isn't the point. I just want
> nothing to do with ideology that implicitly reckons it knows it all, or
> that correct discourse can fix it all.
rob, might it not be that what you relegate to biology is instead what you feel is inexplicable within the framework of a certain kind of rationalism? it seems to me that the examples you have given (esp those of instances of violence you gave some posts ago) are those which you felt to be inexplicable alongside the presumption that humans will act rationally, hence the need to explain what appears irrational within such by virtue of the ineffable 'instincts'. can i ask -- leaving aside whether or not you agree with freud's or lacan's specific perspectives -- do you think there is an unconscious?
rakesh wrote:
> But hetero women and queers do have a biological sex [in common].<
rakesh, whereas you're usually attentive to the historical formation of typologies when it comes to 'race' you don't apply the same or at least similar queries when it comes to sex me thinks -- for instance, it was not always the case that het women and lesbians were considered to be of the same sex, let alone gender. but more specifically, i'm thinking that genetics has enjoyed an elevation in explanatory applications over the last twenty years to such an extent, with the discovery of certain technologies of observation, that it has led to their being given such wide play in these discussions without once considering that the relationship between technique and truth remains to be queried, and indeed to be regarded as more conjunctural a (dare i say) technology of self than is being advanced here.
katha wrote:
> it's quite a leap from saying
> that childbirth means different things in different contexts to saying
> that biological sex is itself a constructed category.
katha, doesn't 'biological sex' presuppose _biology_? that is to say, prior to biology as a form of knowledge (or at least a priveliged one), weren't there quite different ways of explaining the origin, cause and aim of sex and gender that in turn produced or enforced different practices (say, the garden of eden)? and with the emergence of biology, isn't it also the case that biology arrives with a set of techniques which in turn seek to transform the actuality of sex and gender, most notably surgery, chromosome 'therapies', and so forth? ie., biology -- does not arrive and simply observe 'the facts', but intervenes in order to classify us into a norm and the pathological, as well as to find and apply cures for ostensible pathologies, providing new explanatory schemas for anything ranging from sexuality to criminality to potentiality for ill-health that serve as the basis for further medical interventions, as part of policy packages, and so on. to that extent, it doesn't seem at all possible to unscramble biology from 'culture' any more than we can claim that biology (as a form of knowledge and set of techniques) is not part of 'culture', that it (because it is a science) exists in another 'non-cultural' realm.
a number of people keep being appalled at the suggestion that sex is discursive, so a bridging concept perhaps:
it seems to me there's no reason to keep thinking that 'discourse' in this context (or any other) implies an ability to change matters at will any more than it's possible to refuse the implications and force of money simply because we know it's a fetish. and, if certain kinds of knowledge (such as biology) are indistinguishable from their practices (which are indeed ambivalent from any critical perspective), then why is it plausible to assert that 'discourse' has no relation to constructing reality any less than money has the power to construct the daily reality of working for a wage?
anomalously,
Angela _________