In her 2005 collection of essays, Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power, philosopher and cultural studies critic Elizabeth Grosz questions the conceptual primacy of culture over nature in contemporary critical discourse. She also asserts a concept of nature as a material reality or set of events/forces that not only “incite” culture, but continually shape it by consistently posing problems from the “outside.”
Though I concur with her general critique I question her constant references to nature as “matter” and “ground.” In contrast to this rhetoric of matter, I place Judith Butler’s rhetorical concept of “materialization,” a dynamic process by which bodies come to “matter” without arresting or completing the process of becoming. Butler uses this term primarily with reference to human bodies, but it could be applied to the natural world at large. Butler’s term is also consistent with the normal science of contemporary physics which replaces the concept of matter with energy and information.
While I thank Grosz for showing me what nature has “done for me lately,” I attempt to return the favor by bringing Judith Butler into the discourse:
Can we conceive nature as a process of materialization rather than a material ground for culture?
How would this affect views of nature within cultural studies and the humanities in general?
How would this concept be received by environmentalists/biologists?
Are the discourses of quantum mechanics, biology, and cultural studies at all compatible in this sense?
Though I concur with her general critique I question her constant references to nature as “matter” and “ground.” In contrast to this rhetoric of matter, I place Judith Butler’s rhetorical concept of “materialization,” a dynamic process by which bodies come to “matter” without arresting or completing the process of becoming. Butler uses this term primarily with reference to human bodies, but it could be applied to the natural world at large. Butler’s term is also consistent with the normal science of contemporary physics which replaces the concept of matter with energy and information.
While I thank Grosz for showing me what nature has “done for me lately,” I attempt to return the favor by bringing Judith Butler into the discourse:
Can we conceive nature as a process of materialization rather than a material ground for culture?
How would this affect views of nature within cultural studies and the humanities in general?
How would this concept be received by environmentalists/biologists?
Are the discourses of quantum mechanics, biology, and cultural studies at all compatible in this sense?
Christine Skolnik, Dept of English
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