Narrative Selection: On the Potentials of Alternative Evolutionary Theories for Refiguring the Human in Feminist Ecocritical Discourse

Abstract

This thesis explores the presence of evolutionary narratives in the work of various feminist ecocritical scholars. It brings these narratives to the surface and examines which specific evolutionary scientific theories they emerge from, why feminist scholars engage with them, and what potentials they hold for feminist ecocritical knowledge practices that seek to refigure what it means to be(come) human.

At the core of this thesis is a critical proposition: every evolutionary account enacts a selective cut into a pluriform terrain of potentiality. No evolutionary theory or narrative can give us the whole story: there’s a gap between the richness, complexity and plurality of evolutionary dynamics and the inherent partiality of any knowledge system that tries to capture them. This will bring forth particular dimensions of evolution—and, by extension, of what it means to be human—while foreclosing others. Following Donna Haraway’s account of the deep imprint evolution has left on how we think, feel, and act, this thesis centers on the epistemological and performative stakes of such selectivity for the framing of human subjectivity, behavior, relationality, and change. I ask what kinds of ideas become possible or impossible in this regard, depending on which evolutionary perspectives are taken up.

From here, two core inquiries emerge. The first asks: What does it mean when some perspectives within evolutionary thinking become hegemonic—dominant both in scientific discourse and cultural imagination—and the particular dimensions of the field of potentiality they produce, are constantly amplified? What specific configurations of being human do they construct and sustain? Furthermore, in this thesis the idea of evolutionary understandings as necessarily partial—each bringing forth only certain facets of a terrain that exceeds the grasp of any one way of knowing—is not merely a critique of epistemic limitation. It is also an opening! This is my invitation to understand otherwise, to dwell in the generative space that such an approach affords. If no story can be total or final, there is always room to explore what else is possible, to tell a different story and enact evolution in a different way. The second inquiry builds from this recognition: What becomes possible when we affirmatively and subversively take up the idea of selectivity in knowledge production, and turn toward alternative, marginalized evolutionary perspectives? And more specifically for this thesis, what potentials do they hold for feminist ecocritical approaches that seek to refigure what it means to be(come) human?

A body of feminist ecocritical scholarship—including Donna Haraway, Astrida Neimanis, Ursula Le Guin, Stacy Alaimo, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Myra Hird, Donna McCormarck, Margrit Shildrick, Carla Hustak and Natasha Myers, Elizabeth Grosz, Tess Williams, and Evelyn Fox Keller—is my way into the latter question. I contend that the evolutionary ideas that can be recognized in these works signal critical breaks from conventional scientific accounts of evolution and reflect a minoritarian approach to knowledge production. Rather than aligning with the central paradigm of the field, called the Neo-Darwinian Modern Synthesis, feminist scholars tend to engage directly or intertextually with scientific knowledges and discourses at the margins of mainstream evolutionary biology, such as the Aquatic Ape theory, the Carrier Bag theory, rhizomatics, lateral gene transfer, symbiogenesis, punctuated equilibrium, and the Hopeful Monsters hypothesis. Each chapter of this thesis examines the alternative perspectives on human subjectivity, behavior, relationality, and change that become possible when these evolutionary knowledges are taken up.