Illdisciplined Gender: Engaging Questions of Nature/Culture and Transgressive Encounters (Crossroads of Knowledge)

This volume offers some of the outputs, challenges and opportunities created in an interdisciplinary programme that was set up to engage multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives on issues at the intersections of nature and culture, sex and gender. When working with mass spectrometers, microscopes, discourse analysis or interviews, one rarely has to explain them to colleagues. They are the tools used. But when working in inter- or transdisciplinary settings, such tools require explanations. These conversations make evident that trans and interdisciplinary (gender) research is a not just a novelty requiring an adjectival prefix 'trans-' or 'inter-', it is something done, performed, practiced. Moreover it is something done in particular spaces, a consequence of particular meetings - transgressive encounters. This collection is built on work conducted under the GenNa: Nature/Culture and Transgressive Encounters Research Programme, funded by the Swedish research council. It brings together a range of scholars from the humanities, natural, physical, life, and social sciences by so doing it reflects on the challenges, risks and opportunities of doing trans- and interdisciplinary work. The result is a collection that uses a multitude of tools to examine issues such as sexual difference, hydro power exploitation, research seminars, dairy farming, the spaces between molecules, film and identity. They are witness to the diversity created through transgressive encounters and illustrations of doing inter- and transdisciplinary research.-- Provided by publisher Contents 6 Contributors 8 About the Authors 10 Chapter 1: Illdisciplined Gender: Nature/Culture and Transgressive Encounters 13 1.1 Introduction 13 1.2 The GenNa Programme: A Space for Doing Interdisciplinary Research 14 1.3 Doing Interdisciplinarity 15 1.4 Structure of the Volume 19 References 20 Chapter 2: Interstitial Spaces: A Model for Transgressive Processes 22 2.1 Point of Departure 22 2.2 Interstitial Spaces and Transgressive Identities 23 2.3 Autobiography as a Methodology 25 2.4 Feminist Awakenings and Emerging Transgressive Identities 27 2.4.1 Kristina 27 2.4.2 Kathryn (Kate) 28 2.4.3 Anita 29 2.4.4 Annica 29 2.4.5 Kate 30 2.4.6 Kristina 31 2.4.7 Anita 31 2.4.8 Kate 32 2.4.9 Annica 32 2.4.10 Anita 34 2.4.11 Kate 35 2.4.12 Kristina 36 2.4.13 Anita 36 2.4.14 Kate 37 2.5 Feminist Awakenings: Similarities and Themes 37 2.6 Taking a Feminist Science Education Stance 39 2.7 Interstitial Spaces: A Chafing Borderland 40 References 41 Chapter 3: Failed Encounters or the Challenges of Rendering Gender a Matter of Concern 42 3.1 Introduction 42 3.2 The Seminar 44 3.3 Mobilising Gender Stories and Statistics 45 3.4 Narratives of (Un)concern 48 3.5 Acting with Contestations 50 3.6 Conclusion 51 References 53 Chapter 4: Images of Cows, Stories of Gender 55 4.1 Incongruous Cows, Clumsy Conversations 55 4.2 Making Connections: Animals and Gender Studies 56 4.3 Phenomenal Udders and Perfect Hip Scores 59 4.4 Rurality and the Beast: Placing Rural Masculinity and Bulls 64 4.5 Gender, Animals and Rural Development 66 References 69 Chapter 5: TechnoVisions of a Sámi Cyborg: Reclaiming Sámi Body-, Land-, and Waterscapes After a Century of Colonial Exploitations in Sábme 72 5.1 Hear the Ulldevis vuolle! 72 5.2 The Colonization of Sábme 81 5.3 Cyborg Identities 87 5.4 Challenging Hi-Story: Dreams of Bright Futures 89 5.5 Challenging Hi-Story: The Presence and Absence of Sámi in Society and Academia 94 5.6 Reclaiming Our Body-, Land-, and Waterscapes through Academic Research 95 5.7 Yoiking the TechnoVisions of a Sámi Cyborg 97 References 100 Other Sources 107 Chapter 6: Marking the Unmarked: Theorizing Intersectionality and Lived Embodiment Through Mammoth and Antichrist 108 6.1 A Phenomenological Approach to Intersectionality 108 6.2 Intersectionality and the Body: Why Lived Embodiment? 110 6.3 Negotiations of Embodied Power Relations: Mammoth and Antichrist 112 6.4 Narratives of Late Modern Families: Relational Power between Characters in Mammoth 113 6.5 Scenes from a Marriage: Shifting Power Dynamics in Antichrist 115 6.6 An Intersectionality in the Flesh 117 References 120 Chapter 7: When the Plant Kingdom Became Queer: On Hermaphrodites and the Linnaean Language of Nonnormative Sex 123 7.1 Introduction 123 7.2 Plants with Sexual Organs 124 7.3 Metaphors and Analogies 125 7.3.1 A Heterosexual Norm in the Understanding of Nature? 128 7.4 Reading Humans Through a Lens of Queer Plants 131 7.5 The Swedish Father of Modern Biological Classification 132 7.6 The Species in Its Original, Double and Perfect Form 136 7.7 A Queer Kingdom 139 Illustrations 141 References 141 Chapter 8: Unyoking Sexual Difference: Law, Universality, and the Excluded Other 144 8.1 Introduction: Feminist Theory, Sexual Difference, and the Excluded Other 144 8.2 Act, Performativity, and Exclusion 147 8.3 The Heterosexual Matrix’s Performative Exclusion of Homosexuality 148 8.4 Excluded Alterity as Positivity or Difference 151 8.5 Sexual Difference as Real Universality and Radical Repetition 156 8.6 Unyoking Sexual Difference: beyond the Forced Choice of Politics or Apolitics 158 References 162 Chapter 9: GenNa: Nature/Culture Boundaries and Transgressive Encounters, Programme of Excellence in Gender Research 2007–2012 164 9.1 Afterword 164 Front Matter....Pages i-xi Illdisciplined Gender: Nature/Culture and Transgressive Encounters....Pages 1-9 Interstitial Spaces: A Model for Transgressive Processes....Pages 11-30 Failed Encounters or the Challenges of Rendering Gender a Matter of Concern....Pages 31-43 Images of Cows, Stories of Gender....Pages 45-61 TechnoVisions of a Sámi Cyborg: Reclaiming Sámi Body-, Land-, and Waterscapes After a Century of Colonial Exploitations in Sábme....Pages 63-98 Marking the Unmarked: Theorizing Intersectionality and Lived Embodiment Through Mammoth and Antichrist ....Pages 99-113 When the Plant Kingdom Became Queer: On Hermaphrodites and the Linnaean Language of Nonnormative Sex....Pages 115-135 Unyoking Sexual Difference: Law, Universality, and the Excluded Other....Pages 137-156 GenNa: Nature/Culture Boundaries and Transgressive Encounters, Programme of Excellence in Gender Research 2007–2012....Pages 157-159