Re-evaluating Difference in Light of Biology’s Intriguing Linguistic Compliance

Abstract

This article seeks to examine the precarious division between nature and culture in light of what appears to be a linguistic compliance by the human body. Through the work of Michel Foucault, Pierre Macherey and more specifically, Vicki Kirby, this article argues that nature (the body) and culture (discourse) are not inherently oppositional, thus the way we conceptualize the world must be inseparable from the ‘matter’ under investigation. Given this, discourse is not simply a re-presentation of the organic world, but is constitutive of, and inherently ‘writing’ the natural world it describes. Thus, rather than erecting material/ conceptual borders that give integrity to the nature/culture division, this article proposes a way to think difference more generously.