Click here for the original post.
How can interchange between the life sciences and the humanities help to solve problems facing modern society? This was one of the central questions animating a Biology and Culture Workshop organised by Dr Angelique Richardson. The workshop was funded by the British Academy, with support from the Centre for Victorian Studies, and the two keynote speakers were sponsored by the International Office and the College of Humanities at Exeter. Sessions were introduced and chaired by Richardson and Professor Regenia Gagnier.
Day One
Richardson outlined in her Introduction ways in which biology and the humanities can speak to each other, highlighting the non-essentialist aspects of biology and a new emphasis on environmental context in contemporary biology. In his Welcome Nick Talbot, Professor of Molecular Genetics, and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Knowledge Transfer) emphasised the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in seeking solutions for global problems, citing research on the rice blast fungus which is having a devastating effect on the global food supply, destroying enough rice to feed 60 million people each year. Rice contributes 23% of the calories consumed by the global human population and strategies for controlling rice blast as part of an environmentally sustainable plan are urgently needed.
The keynote – ‘Frenemies: Biology in a Social World’ – was given by Anne Fausto-Sterling, Professor of Biology and Gender Studies in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and Biochemistry at Brown University. Fausto-Sterling is a leading expert in biology and gender development and has achieved recognition for works that challenge entrenched scientific beliefs while engaging with the general public. Her latest research analyses the emergence of behavioural differences between the sexes in early childhood. Invited participants from universities around the UK, who work on literature and science, responded with discussion and state-of-the-field analyses.
Fausto-Sterling’s talk began by considering the intersections between Wendy Brown’s analysis of the crisis in the humanities in her article ‘Neoliberalized Knowledge’ (2011) and Vicki Kirby’s challenge to deeply-held views about nature versus culture in Quantum Anthropologies (2011). If, as Brown argues, it is necessary to offer a compelling defence of the humanities in the increasingly corporatised world of the university, then it is vital for cultural critics to appreciate what Kirby calls the productive energy of scientific theories. The goal of her own research, Fausto-Sterling said, is to articulate a theory that shows how bodies and identities are quasi-objects – that is, hybrids, shaped by the social as well as the natural. It is also important, she said, that this empirical research provides models of complexity, flexibility, passion and democracy, making genuine interchange between science and the humanities possible, as well as activism and politics based in, but not trapped by, living and changing bodies.
In the overview of her research that followed, Fausto-Sterling explained how she uses developmental and dynamic systems theory to look at the emergence of sex-related differences of varieties of human sexuality during the first few years of development. The questions she is trying to answer include: Where do differences in the development of motor activity, and preferences for toys and peer affiliation, come from? What does it mean, biologically, for an eight-month old to have a preference? Fausto-Sterling suggests that it is out of the small daily interactions between parents and babies that materialised differences in male and female bodies begin to emerge. It is possible that gendered social structures literally re-shape the body, as neurological connections form in infants.
Following Fausto-Sterling’s compelling presentation, workshop participants debated the issue of how it was possible to reconcile disciplines and find commonality between humanists and scientists who study sex and sexuality. Should the humanities organize themselves into problem-based teams, for example, and address themselves to science policy makers rather than scientists? How could literary critics establish themselves as an expertise to be taken seriously when policy decisions are being made? Professor Jay Clayton (Vanderbilt University) argued that by focusing on specific problems, scholars might avoid creating a false binary between culturalists and physicalists. Some participants found the idea of problem-based teams a troubling one, suggesting that humanists deal with what cannot be measured in a world that is increasingly obsessed with the quantifiable. One role of the humanities, it was agreed, was to articulate a language of complexity for a world driven by commodities, markets, and the easily consumable.
To continue reading, click here.