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Nature in the body: temporality, order, and coloniality from Columbus to the gene
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Méndez Velázquez, Anel. Nature in the body: temporality, order, and coloniality from Columbus to the gene. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-2y2j-zx04

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TitleNature in the body: temporality, order, and coloniality from Columbus to the gene
NameMéndez Velázquez, Anel (author); Schuller, Kyla (chair); Cohen, Ed (member); Martínez-San Miguel, Yolanda (member); Feliciano-Santos, Sherina (member); Rutgers University; School of Graduate Studies
Date Created2022
Other Date2022-10 (degree)
SubjectScience history, Latin American studies, Gender studies, Americas, Caribbean, Early modernity, Genetics, Genomics, Natural history, Science & technology studies
Extent1 online resource (204 pages)
DescriptionWhat, exactly, is mobilized in terms like biological and genetic that makes them recognizably equivalent to natural? To understand how this mobilization works, the present work sought insight into how the idea of an ordering Nature forms part of causal explanations for social practices and identity categories, and analyzed how those explanations relate to the temporal structure at the core of the conception of an ordering Nature. The work argues that naturalistic explanations implicitly rely on a conception of Nature as an ordering entity structured by a dual temporality. This dual temporality makes it possible for us to understand Nature simultaneously as eternal and of the moment; as continuous and temporally-unlimited ordering yet, always instantiated in temporally-limited, transient units. The work further argues that this temporal duality can be identified in other concepts, elements, or relations that have come to represent and be equivalent to ordering Nature, and which are often invoked as self-evident stand-ins for Nature or Natural causality. As which elements and concepts act as equivalents of Nature changes according to context, the dual temporality remains implicit in their conceptualization, granting continuity and renewed currency to ordering Nature. The work identifies some such equivalents and analyze how they have been connected to the classification of bodies in the period bookended by the early Spanish colonization of the Américas in sixteenth century and mid-twentieth century gene theory. The analysis shows a viable genealogical line of contemporary notions of genetics as the source of life’s organization, and of ordering Nature as constitutive of a way of thinking about bodies as determined by Nature from within. The work highlights a shift in emphasis during this historical period, from a main concern with environmental interactions and relations of proximity, to a central concern with the materials and mechanisms located in bodies. Through analysis of the role of ordering Nature in this shift, the work argues that the apparent locus of the ordering action of Nature changed, increasingly zooming into the bodies of living beings, and moving from determining bodies through external, environmental interactions – through an action “from without” – to determining them through an action from within.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Genretheses
Persistent URLhttps://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-2y2j-zx04
LanguageEnglish
CollectionSchool of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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