The process of the production of modern human bodies - from opposable thumbs (only two) to the hips, spine, etc. associated with standing erect, to monthly menses, to proclivities for hernias and knee and rotator cuff injuries, to the intertwined partiality and particularities of our sensual capacities, to the open-ended facility for our kinds (not singular) of languages (not singular) was/is a social process.
It's facile to pull out five livers, just as it is to appeal to Naziism, what's socially and materially important - in contemporary and evolutionary terms - is not some ridiculous appeal to vulgar macro-structural transformations in our bodies, its the central importance of seemingly little things. Capitalism, coming out of, imposed upon and changing one set of wildly differentiated social systems and differentiated bodies has not only transformed the dynamics of global uneven development - accelerating change, intensifying crises and obliterating much of the past - but it has contributed to radical - in evolutionary terms given the meaning of 150 years - changes in the bodies of human beings, all of which are tied to capitalist social relations. (Perhaps this is too strong, but I'm sticking with it for the moment.)
There's the invention of and subsequent mixing of "discrete" "races," "nations" and "cultures", there's the spread of disease and nutrition, there's the extension of average height and lifespan in some places and the intensification of death and malnutrition in others, there are transformations in ages of sexual maturation and definitions of the unfit-to-live, there's the intensification of the cyborg mediation of our senses and the death of any number of languages... and all of this is intertwoven, emergent, flush with immanence and contradiction.
Structural determinate, natural limits, and "at the limit" arguments tend towards reductionis t and simplistic scientific realism, undemocratic expertism and apocalyptic authoritarianism - Malthus, Spencer, etc. I don't understand the need to root language in some sort of brain structure or to treat it as something that structures the brain - both desires seem ridiculous. I also don't see how the existence of one language, different than any other in its structure (as some claim), would necessarily mean that the structure of the brain has nothing to do with the structure of language. This shit makes my brain hurt - sorry for being incoherent in earlier posts, I hope this one's better.
On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 8:22 AM, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> So, if we change the social system, and then we will have people with five
> livers instead of one? Is there some society in which people have no spinal
> cord?
>
> --- On Thu, 6/11/09, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
>
> > From: ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org>
> > Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Kenneally, some notes and background
> > To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> > Date: Thursday, June 11, 2009, 11:20 PM
> >
> >
> > Miles,
> >
> > biological factors do not need to exist as independent
> > elements (in your sense) for us to be able to talk
> > independently of them. No?
> >
> > --ravi
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
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> >
>
>
>
>
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