The way of the flesh: life, geopolitics and the weight of the future
2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 21; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0966369x.2013.879110
ISSN1360-0524
Autores Tópico(s)Foucault, Power, and Ethics
ResumoAbstractHow can a feminist materialism problematise the knowledges and practices of geopolitics, and locate new objects for critical analysis? In the following, I acknowledge how geopolitics as a form of statecraft has been preoccupied with the unruly nature of flesh. I also note how an accounting for flesh as a socio-spatial material has helped to animate both a critical geopolitical inquiry concerned with the inscription of bodies alongside other texts and a feminist concern with embodiment. My response to these developments is twofold. First, I want to query the devolving of the flesh into an ideologically saturated matter that can be examined using corporeal bodies as entry points for analysis. Second, and via recourse to work founded on feminist material philosophies, I want to reclaim the excessive, lively character of flesh. To do so, I outline how the geo- in geopolitics can be understood as an 'earthiness' that is concerned, at the broadest level, with differential orderings of and access to life, and especially the matters of sex, sexuality and reproduction, and, more specifically, with a concern for differential renderings of a corporeal vulnerability and obduracy, and the articulation of these alongside the building of a practice-based ethics. Using the example of stem cells, I go on to demonstrate how an emphasis upon flesh as an object of analysis allows for a reworking of geopolitics' traditional foci – such as borders – away from questions of the 'where' of social relations and toward the inexhaustible becoming of materials and forces that makes and unmakes such foci.La manera de la carne: vida, geopolítica y el peso del futuro¿Cómo puede un materialismo feminista problematizar los saberes y las prácticas de la geopolítica, y encontrar nuevos objetos para el análisis crítico? En lo que sigue, reconozco cómo la geopolítica como forma del arte de gobernar ha estado preocupada con la naturaleza rebelde de la carne. También destaco cómo el dar cuenta de la carne como un material socio-espacial ha ayudado a animar tanto la indagación geopolítica crítica que dedicada a la inscripción de los cuerpos junto con otros textos, como también a un interés feminista con la encarnación. Mi respuesta a estos desarrollos es doble. Primero, deseo interrogar sobre lo involutivo de la carne hacia una materia ideológicamente saturada que puede ser examinada utilizando cuerpos corpóreos como puntos de partida de un análisis. Segundo, y a través de trabajo basado en filosofías materiales feministas, deseo reclamar el carácter excesivo, vívido de la carne. Para lograrlo, delineo cómo lo geo en la geopolítica puede ser entendido como una "terrenalidad" que tiene un interés, en su nivel más amplio, en ordenamientos diferenciales del acceso a la vida y de la vida misma, y especialmente del tema del sexo, la sexualidad y la reproducción; y, más específicamente, con una preocupación por representaciones diferenciales de una vulnerabilidad y obstinación corpóreas; y, la articulación de estas junto con la construcción de una ética basada en la práctica. Utilizando el ejemplo de las células madre, demuestro cómo un énfasis sobre la carne como objeto de análisis permite volver a repensar los focos tradicionales de la geopolítica – como las fronteras – lejos de las cuestiones del "dónde" de las relaciones sociales, y hacia la inacabable transformación de materiales y fuerzas que hace y deshace tales focos.肉体之路:生命、地缘政治,以及未来的重量唯物女性主义如何能够问题化地缘政治的知识与实践,并定位新的研究对象以进行批判分析?以下我将指认地缘政治做为国家治理的形式,如何专注于难以驾驭的肉体本质。我亦关注将肉体视为社会空间的物质,如何同时协助刺激考量身体铭刻和其他文本的批判性地缘政治质问,以及女性主义对于体现的关照。我对于上述发展的回应有二。首先,我想探问肉体转让进入由意识形态所浸透的问题,并可运用肉身身体做为分析的起点加以检视之。再者,透过根据女性主义唯物哲学的研究,我企图恢復具有极度生气蓬勃特徵的肉体。为了达到上述目的,我将概述地缘政治中的"地缘"如何可被理解为在最大的层次上考量生命的差异秩序、以及获得生命的"属地性",特别是有关性、性慾和再生产的问题;尤其是对于肉体的脆弱性和顽固性的差异化表现之考量;以及上述事物随着植基于实践的伦理建造的接合。我接着运用干细胞的案例,展现强调肉体做为分析的对象,如何得以考量地缘政治的传统焦点——例如边界——的重构,使之从有关社会关係"在哪"的问题,转向创造并消解此般焦点的物质及驱动力的无尽"生成"。Keywords:: geopoliticsfeminist analysisfleshstem cellsmaternal anxietyPalabras claves:: geopolíticaanálisis feministacarnecélulas madreansiedad materna关键词:: 地缘政治女性主义分析肉体干细胞妊娠焦虑 AcknowledgementsMy sincere thanks to the editor of GPC Peter Hopkins and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on this text.Notes 1. A critical geopolitics has also been attenuated by a post-modern scepticism as to the particular rhetorics of progress associated with the evolution of the nations-state, and relations between these, in the modern era. Importantly for many geographers, such modern rhetorics are critiqued as being bound up with a particular rendering of space as a two-dimensional field across which locations are sited, and processes flow and ebb, as well as a linear temporality that describes the 'rise' of civilisations, and the 'march' to equality. Sometimes referred to as a 'Cartesian space', or a 'grid system', such spaces are not, critics argue, given features of the world, but a way of framing it such that particular projects that 'pin down' people to place can be planned and enacted. As post-modern theories have pointed out, both of these forms of rhetoric are immensely powerful, insofar as they persuade us as to the necessity, and even the value, of prevailing social and environmental conditions. What is more, they insist that future events are already fated. 2. Of course, there is a vulnerability associated with the taking on board of a term – earthiness – that has been used as a signifier for the inferiority of various cohorts over the centuries. The implication time and again has been that such cohorts have not risen above the flesh when compared with others, and so are not capable of entering into a politic community. For me, however, it invokes a sustained body of feminist work that is concerned with the import of both biology and ecology, but which takes both under critical consideration according to how and with what import such knowledges are, and can be, put to use. With regard to this latter point, I would add that such work is open to the notion of experimentation with the unknown underwriting the natural sciences, but also the specialised experimentations of philosophy and the arts. 3. This does not mean that gender and sex somehow become irrelevant issues; the processes by which this disassociation occurs, and the various scientific, economic and political imperatives that animate them, are differentially inflected by a wealth of social relations and biological capacities, and the manner in which these become enmeshed. One can think, for example, of the 2005 'scandal' at the world's foremost stem cell cloning laboratory in South Korea led by 'national hero' Professor Hwang Woo-Suk: ethical irregularities would appear to have encompassed not only paying women for eggs and not informing them fully of the medical risks, but also 'pressuring' junior, female members of the research team to also 'donate' eggs. 4. From company website, http://www.cryo-save.com/ (accessed 21 July 2013). 5. From a Bieke Biotech press release, http://www.beikebiotech.com/index.php/76-news-and-events/news-releases/429-beike-biotechnology-opens-worlds-largest-stem-cell-storage-and-processing-facility (accessed 21 July 2013). 6. From company website, http://www.futurehealthbiobank.com/services/lipo-stem-cells?v = pricelist. 7. From company website, http://www.futurehealthbiobank.com/services/lipo-stem-cells?v = process (accessed 21 July 2013). 8. From company website, http://www.lifecellfemme.com/what_is_femme.aspx (accessed 21 July 2013). 9. From company website, http://www.lifecell.in/antenatal-care-classes.aspx. (accessed 21 July 2013).10. From company website, http://www.virginhealthbank.com/our-services/community-banking/community-banking?t = 98& (accessed 21 July 2013).11. From company website, http://www.virginhealthbank.com/our-services/community-banking/community-banking?t = 98& (accessed 21 July 2013).12. From the company website, http://stem-health.eu/public/ (accessed 21 July 2013).Additional informationNotes on contributorsDeborah P. DixonDeborah Dixon is Professor of Geography at the University of Glasgow. She was an Editor of Gender, Place and Culture from 2006–2011, and recently co-edited (alongside Sallie Marston) Feminist Geopolitics: At the Sharp End (2013, Routledge: London). Her work is primarily concerned with the interplay between post-structuralist and feminist materialist theories, as manifest in the biographies of various 'monstrous' forms, from Enlightenment beasts in the French countryside to the channelling forms of spiritual mediums, as well as the fleshy medium of Bioart, and the labouring bodies of migrant workers. Currently, Deborah is an Editor for Environment and Planning A, and also sits on the Editorial Boards of Dialogues in Human Geography, Aether: Journal of Media Geographies, the RGS-IBG Book Series and the AAG Review of Books.
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