The Ideal of Nature: Debates about Biotechnology and the Environment

1 Disposing Nature or Disposing of It?: Reflections on the Instruction of Nature

In the well-known maxim “Culture proposes, Nature disposes,” it is implied that we humans may have hypotheses about the ways that nature works but that nature itself will settle the issue. The question at hand is precisely whether the invocation of nature to decide questions of environmental or biomedical policy can finally settle anything. On what grounds can we reasonably discriminate between activities and interventions in terms of their “naturality”—and what is the normative burden of doing so? Does X being determined as “natural” render it either more generally acceptable or morally compelling; if so, why? In short, does “nature ” instruct us in any universally agreeable sense on what we should do, or not do, either to ourselves or our management of the environment? Can it figure as a moral ideal we should choose to uphold, at least in some contexts? Or is it the case, as Steven Vogel (2006) claimed, that we should be better off disposing with any reference to it altogether? In short, does nature dispose, or should we dispose of it? Thirty years ago, these questions would hardly have been addressed in the academy. Or if they had been, they would have been broached for the most part to challenge spurious claims about the supposed “perversity” of homosexuality or about the “naturally” ordained character of divisions and differences (relating to class, gender, ethnicity) that in reality owed more to social construction than to biological determination. It was, in short, to undermine reactionary attempts to chapter One Disposing Nature or Disposing of It? Reflections on the Instruction of Nature Kate Soper, M.A. 2 Kate Soper invoke “nature” as a means of policing behavior (especially sexual behavior) or of perpetuating—by presenting them as “natural” and thus as immutable— dimensions of existence that were in reality socially instituted. The challenge, as Jonathan Dollimore and others have pointed out, was to the “violence” done in the name of “nature” rather than to the offenses caused by its dismissal (Dollimore, 1991, pp. 114–15; Soper, 1995, pp. 119–48, esp. 145 n.2). Most of these objectors were left-leaning and saw their interventions as a progressive response to regrettable forms of social conservatism or even bigotry. In that intellectual context, the quarrel—to invoke the distinction developed by Gregory Kaebnick in this volume—was with the use of “nature” as a group norm in policing individual behavior, and the appeal to nature was thought of as an appeal to an ontological fixity whose “endorsement” would guarantee the unalterable quality of whatever was stamped as “natural.” Hence, the usage became problematic in discussions about class, gender, and race. Today, antifoundationalist theories, most influentially the arguments of Foucault and his followers, have challenged earlier conceptions of the “natural,” which signified givens of biology or physics, seeing such conceptions instead as inherently revisable cultural norms. (Foucault and his arguments have also been influential around the idea of the “reverse discourse” in encouraging individuals to resist not only the oppression of supposedly natural group norms but also any approving redescription of their alleged individual “perversity” as, in fact, “equally natural.”) There have also been dramatic developments in genetic engineering and other technical advances that have removed many of the earlier, biologically based determinants of social policy and practice. Our developed powers over “nature” in recent decades have led us to be more often at the mercy of what culture and economic and social policy enforces than to be subject to biological dictates. It is easier to obtain breast enhancement and other forms of cosmetic surgery than it is to shift stereotypes of beauty and sexual attraction. Much of the illness and misery afflicting the world’s poorest could be eradicated were it not for the economic relations and political orders standing in the way. It is, in other words, often simpler to counter and alter what is genetically determined than to curb or transform the conventions of culture (Soper, 1995, pp. 139–40). We have also witnessed the massive erosion and exhaustion of environmental territory and resources that ecologists often call the “loss,” or even the “end,” of nature. The practical and theoretical impact of these developments is becoming more apparent. Growing concerns voiced across the political spectrum, by no means confined to Disposing Nature or Disposing of It? 3 its more reactionary elements, raise questions about “unnatural” activity of various kinds, including humanly wrought transformations of the...