The Trouble With Nature

by Lancaster, Roger N.

• ISBN13: 9780520202870
• ISBN10: 0520202872
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

Roger N. Lancaster provides the definitive rebuttal of evolutionary just-so stories about men, women, and the nature of desire in this spirited exposeacute; of the heterosexual fables that pervade popular culture, from prime-time sitcoms to scientific theories about the so-called gay gene. Lancaster links the recent resurgence of biological explanations for gender norms, sexual desires, and human nature in general with the current pitched battles over sexual politics. Ideas about a "hardwired" and immutable human nature are circulating at a pivotal moment in human history, he argues, one in which dramatic changes in gender roles and an unprecedented normalization of lesbian and gay relationships are challenging received notions and commonly held convictions on every front. The Trouble with Naturetakes on major media sources--theNew York Times,Newsweek--and widely ballyhooed scientific studies and ideas to show how journalists, scientists, and others invoke the rhetoric of science to support political positions in the absence of any real evidence. Lancaster also provides a novel and dramatic analysis of the social, historical, and political backdrop for changing discourses on "nature," including an incisive critique of the failures of queer theory to understand the social conflicts of the moment. By showing how reductivist explanations for sexual orientation lean on essentialist ideas about gender, Lancaster invites us to think more deeply and creatively about human acts and social relations.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction. Culture Wars, Nature Wars: A Report from the Front	1	(34)
ORIGINS STORIES	35	(36)
1. In the Beginning, Nature
2. The Normal Body	41	(12)
3. The Human Design	53	(6)
4. Our Animals, Our Selves	59	(12)
ADAM AND EVE DO THE WILD THING: THE SCIENCE OF DESIRE, THE SELFISH GENE, AND OTHER MODERN FABLES
5. The Science Question: Cultural Preoccupations and Social Struggles	71	(9)
6. Sexual Selection: Eager, Aggressive Boy Meets Coy, Choosy Girl	80	(11)
7. The Selfish Gene	91	(11)
8. Genomania and Heterosexual Fetishism	102	(15)
VENUS AND MARS AT THE FIN DE SIÈCLE: EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY AND THE MODERN ART OF SPIN
9. Biological Beauty and the Straight Arrow of Desire	117	(21)
10. Homo Faber, Family Man	138	(13)
11. T-Power	151	(9)
12. Nature's Marriage Laws	160	(9)
VARIETIES OF HUMAN NATURE: THE VIEW FROM ANTHROPOLOGY AND HISTORY
13. Marooned on Survivor Island	169	(8)
14. Selective Affinities: Commonalities and Differences in the Family of Man	177	(25)
15. The Social Body	202	(19)
16. The Practices of Sex	221	(12)
PERMUTATIONS ON THE "NATURE" OF DESIRE: THE GAY BRAIN, THE GAY GENE, AND OTHER TALES OF IDENTITY
17. This Queer Body	233	(7)
18. The Biology of the Homosexual	240	(18)
19. Desire Is Not a "Thing"	258	(10)
20. Familiar Patterns, Dangerous Liaisons	268	(17)
THE ENDS OF NATURE: THE WEIRD ANTINOMIES OF POSTMODERN MASS CULTURE
21. "Nature" in Quotation Marks	285	(8)
22. Money's Subject	293	(13)
23. History and Historicity Flow through the Body Politic	306	(16)
24. The Politics of Dread and Desire	322	(8)
25. Sex and Citizenship in the Age of Flexible Accumulation	330	(12)
An Open-Ended Conclusion	342	(7)
Notes	349	(72)
Index	421