Persistent Coporeality: Early Modern meets Postmodern Theory

This project will congregate two text corpuses that seem rather incompatible at first glance: Post modern feminist and gender theories and early modern natural philosophy. I developed the very plan for this unusual investigation during my dissertation research that comprised the analysis and translation of a dialogue by Oliva Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera, a female Spanish philosopher from the 16th century (Bidwell-Steiner 2009a). In her Nueva filosofa de la naturaleza del hombre (1587) she developed a surprisingly philogynous materialism. The reconstruction of her central concepts demanded for its contextualisation in an intellectual environment, namely a materialistic formation within the Renaissance scientific discourse: Jean Fernel, Girolamo Fracastoro, Leone Hebreo, Juan Huarte de San Juan, Miguel Servet and Bernardino Telesio. Some of their epistemological ventures convey striking parallels with today`s inquiries on embodiment: these Renaissance authors offer highly original approaches on corporeality which are related to a specific Mediterranean heritage of materialistic ideas. Their concentration on the interplay between body and soul, matter and form gravitate towards relational models of nature and nurture, ideas which they for instance convey in frameworks on the significance of affects. The complex field of mutual influences between the "inside" and the "outside" of the body that preoccupy Early Modern philosophy is also a core problem in recent theories on body regimes. Especially todays Gender theorists (for instance Karen Barad, Donna Haraway, Ann Fausto Sterling) depict the idea of an embodied mind, which subverts the dichotomist order of matter and form. Principles of order are always rhetorically constructed. Therefore it comes as no surprise that most scholars in the field of Gender and Cultural Studies set out their analysis by uncovering the metaphorical origins of scientific truths and canons (cp. Bidwell-Steiner/Wozonig 2005, Bidwell- Steiner/Zangl 2009). It is a vital concern of the proposed project that this is a strategy contemporary feminist scholarship shares with the mentioned Renaissance philosophers. Hence, my commitment to this specific historical survey of materialistic body models: a perspective of historical otherness reveals important insights into the construction of embodiments of the "other" of the (male) subject, one of the key paradigms of gender theory. Since gender regimes rely on orders of body and mind (as is shown in a lecture series I organized for the ongoing academic year at the University of Vienna), it will be instructive to investigate their entanglement (notion w.r.t. Barad 2008) with technological, social and cultural beliefs. Therefore I will not only address issues pertaining to the history of ideas on embodiment but also trace responses in literary texts of the Early Modern Mediterranean to the revisited philosophical body concepts. In doing so, I shall identify some important cultural and social preconditions for the production of scientific knowledge(s) in a historical perspective. This strategy will convey a sense for the embeddedness and situatedness of scientific innovation in specific world views and world experiences.

This project took the challenge to congregate two bodies of knowledge that are a not customary subject of a vivid exchange of ideas: Postmodern feminist and gender theories and early modern scientific discourse. A close reading of the two text corpora showed that the periods, which frame the so-called Scientific Revolution, share significant epistemological ventures and habits of thought. Renaissance authors offer highly original approaches to corporeality as their concentration on the interplay between body and soul gravitates towards relational models of nature and nurture. The mutual influence between the "inside" and the "outside" of the body that preoccupy Early Modern philosophy is also a core problem in recent theories on body regimes. Especially todays Gender theorists depict the idea of an embodied mind, which subverts the dichotomist order of matter and form. Principles of order are always rhetorically constructed. The diachronic confrontation of similar ideas concerning the (gendered) body helped to validate the new conceptual and thus metaphorical fluidity in the readings of body concepts by Feminist and Gender Scholars.In their re-definition of corporeality both textual corpora shift boundaries: I here identified three binary terms for expanding the human body: affect & passion, human & animal, human & artefact. The comparison of affect theories revealed that early modern thinkers and gender theorists both adopt the concept of a pre-conscious faculty, albeit with different goals: gender research aims to thereby undermine rationality, whereas 16th century philosopher use it to emphasize the idea that humans are strictly natural creatures. Paradoxically, the assertion of the human as exclusively natural being coincides with the death of nature as the rise of anatomy illustrates: The new paradigm of laying bare the principles of nature paved the way for enhancing human individuals with chemical and surgical artifacts, another parallel between the ending 16th and the beginning 21st century. As I could show, these fantasies of perfection entail the rise of an exclusively male mastery in domesticating a passive female nature. Hence, it comes as no surprise that feminist materialism engages different terms. But with their emphasis on ontology instead of nature or reality, feminist and gendertheorists are entering a slippery slope: ontology involves ultimate principles of being which entails some sort of metaphysics. This not only contradicts the postulated materialism, it also re-affirms the core of beliefs that characterizes patriarchal ideology. This discrepancy partly is owing to the ethical demands of gender research, which focuses on the interaction of the human and other agents. Thus, another parallel between the two corpora emerges: both pursue holistic models. Tracing the second boundary, between humans & animals, I could show that this bias results in anthropomorphism.