Bio-R/evolution in historiographic perspective: some reflections on the history and epistemology of biomolecular science

Does the molecular vision of life signify a unique revolution in biology or a more general evolution of the life sciences in the twentieth century? This paper visits this ‘big question’ by reflecting on a series of major debates in the historiography of molecular biology, especially those regarding its origins and the periodization of its development. For instance, while some have suggested that the discipline emerged in the 1930s, others have argued for its birth in the post-WWII era. Above all, the impact of the Rockefeller Foundation and the physical sciences on the formation of molecular biology remains a central topic of discussion among historians of biology. Unlike earlier historians of biomolecular science, recent scholars have also started to pay closer attention to the laboratory and material cultures that had conditioned its historical shaping. This paper argues that, ultimately, these debates all rest upon one fundamental historiographical problem: the absence of a unifying understanding of ‘molecular biology’ among historians (and practitioners) of biological science. This heterogeneous conceptualization of ‘molecular biology’, however, should be viewed as valuable because it allows for multiple approaches to resolving the ‘revolution versus evolution’ debate that together enrich our interpretation of the twentieth-century biomolecular vision of life

Why Sex Mattered: Science and Visions of Transformation in Modern China

Amidst the disintegration of the Qing Empire (1644-1911), men and women in China began to understand their differences in terms of modern scientific knowledge. Why Sex Mattered provides an explanation for the relatively recent emergence of a psycho-biological notion of sex in Chinese culture, focusing in particular on the ways in which the introduction of the Western biomedical sciences had transformed the normative meanings of gender, sexuality, and the body in the twentieth century. This dissertation revises the conventional view that China has "opened up" to the global circulation of sexual ideas and practices only after the economic reforms of the late 1970s. Drawing on scientific publications, medical journals, newspaper clippings, popular magazines, scholarly textbooks, fictional and periodical literatures, oral histories, and other primary sources, this study highlights the 1920s as an earlier, more pivotal turning point in the modern definitions of Chinese sexual identity and desire. The evolving discourse of same-sex desire and the biologization of gender norms constituted two epistemological ruptures that complicated the shifting correlations of sex, gender, and sexuality in the Republican period (1911-1949). The extensive media coverage of sex change in postwar Taiwan epitomized the geocultural legacy of these earlier developments. Weaving together intellectual developments with social, cultural, and political history, this dissertation aims to accomplish three goals: it argues for the centrality of sexual scientific knowledge in modern China's cultural formation; it highlights the role of the body as a catalyst in the mutual transformations of Chinese national modernity and the social significance of sex; and, grounded in the historical-epistemological analysis of the vocabulary and visual knowledge of sexual science, it establishes a genealogical relationship between the demise of eunuchism and the emergence of transsexuality in China. This genealogy, above all, maps the underexplored history of China's modern "geobody" onto the more focused history of the biomedicalized human body. The isochronal evolution of "China" and sex, two constructs that seemed the most immutable of all, evinced the gradual decentering of the familiar frame of colonial modernity with Sinophone articulations in the course of the twentieth century

Historiografia postkolonialna, historiografia odmieńcza: polityczne przestrzenie pisania historii

Jeśli seksualność jako kategoria analizy historycznej uważana jest powszechnie za “społecznie skonstruowaną”, czemu historycy w dalszym ciągu zakładają, że istnieje jakiś podstawowy zbiór fundamentalnych cech spajających wszystkie te rodzaje uprawiania nauki, które określają wspólną etykietką „historia gejowsko-lesbijska” albo „historia queer”? Ten krótki esej odpowiada na ten uderzający paradoks w historiografii queer, odnosząc się do historiografii post-kolonialnej. Autor proponuje traktować projekt historyczny jako intelektualne narzędzie, za pomocą którego można kwestionować dyskursywne konstrukcje przedmiotów wiedzy poprzez różne historiografie (np. marksizm, modernizm itd.). W tym ujęciu odmieniec jako podmiot historyczny rozumiany jest jako zbiór zmiennych pozycji historycznych, w których ich historyczne reprezentacje funkcjonują jako miejsca kontestacji i możliwości.If sexuality as a category of historical analysis is widely acknowledged as “socially constructed” over time and place, why are historians still assuming a core set of essential qualities that unite all those scholarships they categorize under “gay and lesbian history” or “queer history”? This short position essay responds to this striking paradox in queer historiography by turning to post-colonial historiography. In doing so, it proposes the use of the historical project as an intellectual tool that challenges the discursive constructions of objects of knowledge through different historiographies (e.g., Marxism, modernism, etc.). In this attempt, the queer historical subject is conceptualized as comprising shifting historical positions under which their historical representations function as sites of contest and possibility

Imperium pożądania. Historia i teoria queer w dobie globalnego afektu

Praca ta stanowi przegląd stanu badań z dziedziny queer studies oraz argument na rzecz przywrócenia historycyzmu epistemologicznego do odmieńczej analizy teoretycznej, po to, by naświetlić zjawisko globalizacji i transnacjonalizmu seksualności. Według autora można to osiągnąć po pierwsze poprzez „wyrzeczenie się” pewnych konstrukcji intelektualnych, takich jak (1) postrzeganie XIX-wiecznego „Wielkiego Przesunięcia Paradygmatów” jako historycznego zastąpienia „aktów” seksualnych przez „tożsamości” seksualne, (2) przekonanie, iż wszelkie tryby czasowości [modes of temporality] proponowane przez teorię queer są niespójne i nielinearne, oraz (3) idealistyczne założenie, że to, co zdekonstruują, zdenormalizują, czy zdenaturalizują teoretycy queer będzie w jakiś sposób konceptualnie niepodatne na ich jednoczesne konstrukcje, normalizacji i naturalizacje. Aby historia mogła posłużyć do przekształcania teorii queer, należy jednocześnie „otworzyć” pewne drzwi, np. poprzez (1) wprowadzenie kwestii epistemologicznych z powrotem do prób teoretyzowania odmiennych podmiotowości, (2) częstsze dokonywanie generalizacji na temat zmian i ciągłości [continuities] nie tylko w przestrzeni geograficznej ale i w czasie, (3) bardziej zaangażowane etycznie podejście do imperialistycznego charakteru i konsekwencji krytyki queer.This paper surveys the current state of queer studies and argues that epistemological historicism be brought back to bear on queer theoretical analyses, particularly in order to address the challenges of accounting for the globalization and transnationalism of sexuality. The paper proposes that this can be done by, first, "giving up” certain intellectual preoccupations, including (1) the interpretation of the nineteenth-century "Great Paradigm Shift” as a historical succession of sexual "acts” by sexual "identities,” (2) the conviction that whatever modes of temporality queer theory argues for ultimately lack coherency or some kind of linear regularity, and (3) the idealist assumption that whatever queer theorists are deconstructing, denormalizing, or denaturalizing can be somehow conceptually sealed from their simultaneous constructions, normalizations, and naturalizations. Allowing history to serve some trans-formative purposes for queer theory can be accomplished accordingly by "opening up” the parallel doors, such as (1) by bringing epistemological issues back into the theorization of queer subjectivities, (2) by making generalizations more willingly about changes and continuities across not just geographical space but also time, and (3) by being more ethically concerned with the imperialist nature and consequences of queer theoretical critique

Erratum to: Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition) (Autophagy, 12, 1, 1-222, 10.1080/15548627.2015.1100356

non present