Politics Materialized: Rethinking the Materiality of Feminist Political Action through Epigenetics

Abstract

The ‘new’ of new materialism should not be read as current feminism's distancing from or disavowal of the legacy of previous feminist movements. This past cannot be left behind as it is enfolded—both conceptually and materially—and reconfigured as feminism's current theorizing and political action. This article argues that this cultural inheritance is at the same time corporeally manifested in the biology of feminist bodies. Such a contention is inspired by Karen Barad's argument that concepts, ideas and other social phenomena are specific physical arrangements materialized through apparatuses. Barad insists that the relationships between the social, political and discursive and physical matter are not relations of externality. Instead, there is a complex entanglement where the differences between the cultural and the physical are matters of making separate rather than there being two radically separate realms. Barad's claims are supported by epigenetic research into the intergenerational health effects of the experience of social stigma. The results of this research suggest that an individual's environment, both physical and social, current and historical, manifests in biology at the molecular level. So politics, then, is a truly material practice which is at the same time constitutive of its practitioners. New materialism's history of feminist action and theorization can never be excluded from current practices of feminism but neither can it determine them in advance. Politics and feminism are particular, contingent, material histories, with each practitioner reconfiguring her or his specific biological and social materialization as their present-day political and feminist actions.

Keywords:

• materiality
• new materialism
• body
• epigenetics
• Karen Barad
• Foucault

Notes

1 Ahmed's claim here echoes her earlier critique of new materialisms and their supposed forgetting of their legacy (Ahmed 2008). Her criticisms of new materialism have received recent support from Nikki Sullivan (2012). For a critique of Ahmed's position and positive suggestions for how we might theorize new materialist feminisms, see Iris van der Tuin (2008) and Davis (2009).

2 This point was articulated by Karen Barad in her keynote address at a recent conference (Barad 2013).

3 Food and diet is a widely researched epigenetic topic, and it shows that there is not simply a direct relationship between eating and genetic effects; food is not just a physical substance. It enfolds climate, soil profiles, nutrients, pests, pesticides, environmental toxins, ritual practices, agricultural practices, and social and familial bonding—in short, multiple aspects of both the social and physical environment. For a comprehensive review of epigenetic work on food and diet, see Hannah Landecker (2011).

4 For feminist theorists who make such claims against Foucault, see, for instance, Judith Butler (1989, 1997), Ladelle McWhorter (1989, 2004) and Caroline Ramazanoğlu (1993). Margaret McLaren supports Foucault's contentions, but also elaborates the arguments against his position (McLaren 2004).

5 Gametogenesis is the formation of germ cells—that is, ova and sperm (Reik 2007: 430)—and the suggestion that environmental influences are already effective at this stage demonstrates that epigenetic effects are not additions modifying an already existing individual.

6 This should not be considered a determined outcome. Each individual has their own particular susceptibility to be damaged—or energized—by their life situation.

7 Meaney emphasizes that stress reactivity is neither good nor bad in itself, but must be viewed in context. Heightened stress responsivity, he notes, can actually help an individual born into challenging life circumstances to survive into adulthood. It is an individual cost–benefit analysis as to whether this outweighs the propensity for later disease and mortality risks associated with this life situation (Meaney 2010: 65–6).