'Geography is pregnant' and 'geography's milk is flowing': metaphors for a postcolonial discipline?

This paper attempts to mobilise the metaphors of pregnancy and lactation to address the imperatives arising from British academic geography’s postcolonial position. We embed our argument in our readings of extracts from two consciously postcolonial fictional texts. In the first part of the paper we consider geography as a discipline that is pregnant but ‘in trouble’ to illustrate the paradoxical struggle of the discipline to be a global discipline whilst at the same time marginalising the voices and perspectives that make it global. In the second part of the paper we consider geography as a discipline whose ‘milk is flowing’ to suggest ways that the discipline can acknowledge its global interconnectedness to produce a mutually responsible academic agency

Materializing the hypothalamus: A performative account of the ‘gay brain.’

Simon LeVay's research on neuroscience and sexuality has been reiterated in popular media, scientific communities and legal debates. A close reading of this work, drawing on performativity theory (Butler, 1990, 1993), reveals that this popular success is the result of citing and reiterating a number of heterosexist, sexist and culturally imperialist norms. LeVay's work excludes women and ethnic minorities and denies the political, cultural and historical nature of sexuality. Performativity theory suggests the limits of empiricism for feminists, and the importance of postmodern readings of the subject of psychology and neuroscience