New Feminist Sociological Directions

Abstract

Abstract: Feminism has already raised significant questions about the relationship between the cultural and the physical. However, this tends to open up science to the social, leaving the actual materiality of organic and non-organic matter intact. That is, whilst feminism has cast light on social and cultural meanings of sexual difference, there seems to be a hesitation to delve into the actual physical processes through which differentiation and change take place. The momentous shift in the natural sciences towards openness and play within the living and nonliving world will have an enormous impact on sociologists who increasingly grapple with issues involving life and matter (for instance in discussions of 'the body'). The aim of this paper is to pay tribute to the work of Australian feminist theorists, whose recognition of the importance of new materialism for sociological theory is prescient. I will argue that Australian feminist research is a major attempt to deal directly with materiality. Resume : Le feminisme a deja souleve suffisamment de questions au sujet de la relation entre l'aspect culturel et l'aspect physique. Il semble toutefois ouvrir la science a la vie sociale, sans toucher a l'importance reelle des matieres organique et inorganique. Alors que le feminisme a mis en lumiere les significations culturelles et sociales de la difference sexuelle, on semble hesiter a etudier les processus physiques reels de cette distinction et de ce changement. L'important virage des sciences naturelles a legard de l'ouverture et dujeu dans le monde des vivants et des non-vivants aura certes des incidences enormes sur le travail des sociologues qui ne cessant de jangler avec les questions touchant la vie et la matiere (par exemple les discussions sur le >). Le but de cette communication consiste a rendre hommage a l'oeuvre des theoriciennes australiennes dont on doit reconnaitre l'importance du nouveau materialisme pour la theorie sociologique. Je ferai valoir que la recherche des feministes australiannes represente une tentative de taille pour aborder directement cette importance. Introduction There have been a number of significant shifts in the natural sciences within the past few decades to suggest an openness and play within the living and nonliving world (for examples of these shifts see DeLanda, 1997a, 1997b; Deleuze and Guattari, 2002; Jonson, 1999; Kinsman, 2001; Kirby, 1997; Margulis and Sagan, 1997; Rabinow, 1992; Sagan, 1992). (1) I believe these developments within the natural sciences stand to make a significant impression on feminist sociologists who increasingly find themselves grappling with issues involving life and matter (for instance in debates about 'the body,' the 'sex'/'gender' binary and sexual difference). In this paper I attend to explorations of 'new materialism' that have recently been produced by Australian feminists. (2) I want to suggest that Australian feminist theorists' keen interest in science represents a prescient recognition of the merits of engaging directly with the natural sciences. As such, the aim of this paper is to pay tribute to the work of Australian feminist theorists, and to suggest how feminist theory might harness this work to reorient our approaches to bodies and sexual difference. Discussions of materiality within sociology and much of feminist theory tend to be anchored by two critical assumptions (Soper, 1995). (3) Firstly, the constitution of matter is largely figured as inert, stable, concrete, unchangeable and resistant to socio-historical change. Vicki Kirby argues that contemporary critical analyses' insistence that the target of scrutiny is the discursive effects of objects, and not the object themselves, belies a construction of materiality as 'rigid, prescriptive' and opposed to 'cultural determinations that are assumed to be plastic, contestable, and able to invite intervention and reconstruction' (2001: 54). …

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