Ombre Tarragnat

Dans Vivre avec le trouble, Donna Haraway réarticule et prolonge ses réflexions sur les espèces compagnes et la technoscience dans le contexte de la crise écologique. En explorant la figure du trouble, elle développe une pensée queer de l’écologie et des relations entre espèces qui prend pour objet principal le renouvellement des formes de la parenté. Plus encore, elle donne à voir une articulation des enjeux fictionnels, artistiques, scientifiques et militants dans la formation de mondes plus vivables au-delà de l’anthropocentrisme. À l’image de ses précédents ouvrages, Haraway développe ainsi une éthique multispécifique relationnelle qui a attiré la critique des antispécistes et une adoption parfois acritique des penseureuses du vivant. L’importance de l’ouvrage pour la pensée écologique ainsi que pour la théorie féministe posthumaniste et néomatérialiste le rend pourtant absolument incontournable.

Con su enfoque en la encarnación somática, la teoría neurocuir puede contribuir a una comprensión más-que humana de la neurodiversidad y a enseñarnos nuevas lecciones sobre el rol del deseo, el placer, y el dolor en la vida neurodivergente y etodivergente. Con base en el trabajo de Nick Walker y Remi Yergeau, argumento en primer lugar que el neurorreduccionismo patologiza la vida neurocuir y en consecuencia propongo que se conciba lo «neuro-» en neurocuir como una forma de cuirizar y de subvertir el neurocentrismo. Acto seguido, introduzco los conceptos de la etología cuir y las prácticas cuirsomáticas y trazo algunas de las conexiones y diferencias de las ecologías neurodiversas —según la teoría de Erin Manning— y la etodiversidad, específicamente en relación con los conceptos de especies, hacer mundo y coreografías. Para terminar, recurro a los movimientos autorreguladores (stimming) en el autismo, como los definió Mel Baggs, una práctica cuirsomática que despliega una etología cuir del deseo, el placer y el dolor. Planteo que prestar atención a las posibilidades más-que de la animalidad nos permite cuestionar de manera más efectiva la bestialización y la etonormatividad.

Este artículo explora la relación entre neurodiversidad y las ciencias de la vida para proponer un giro más-que-humano y más-que-neurológico en los estudios de neurodiversidad. Se examina cómo la concepción de Judy Singer mantiene una relación ambigua con la biología y se orienta hacia una política antropocéntrica. Asimismo, se señala que el neurocentrismo suele derivar en un neuroreduccionismo que limita la experiencia vivida a lo físico-químico, bestializando así la neurodivergencia. Aunque la neurología no es en sí misma problemática, su adopción acrítica en el movimiento puede desencadenar efectos indeseables, por lo que este artículo propone descentralizarla. Para renovar el vínculo con las ciencias de la vida, se presenta la etología filosófica como base para los conceptos de biodiversidad y etodivergencia.

This papers starts from the observation that in a world of pathologising and ableist autism science, identifying as autistic has meant battling between the necessity of putting words on lived experience and the risk of contributing to self-pathologising through problematic metaphors or frameworks. Following the contribution to feminist epistemology offered by Donna Haraway, I ponder the “science question in autism” and ask to what kinds of situated knowledge autistics can actually pretend. To do so, I use the theory of Monotropism and its reception. First, I show how the theory of Monotropism constitutes a case of situated knowledge of autism and could pretend to a higher form of objectivity. Then, I show that its production, diffusion, and reception rely on non-innocent metaphors of nonhuman movement, mostly taken from physics and plant life, starting with the very term “tropism”, which tends to assimilate autistic cognition to the physicochemical reaction of plants to their environments. Finally, I show how, in the age of a hegemony of reductionist science and of renewed binary debates opposing free will and biological determinism, the theory of Monotropism is sometimes taken up in a form that fuels a self-pathologising of autistic individuals. In turn, I call for more accountability and reflexivity in the production and diffusion of autistic situated knowledges.

Symbiosis is a form of reticulate evolution that refers to ecological, physiological, and genomic associations between organisms from different species, resulting in interactions, bonds, coexistence, cohabitation, and partnerships. Symbiosis can lead to the emergence of new biological individuals, known as holobionts, that simultaneously function as new units and levels or life zones of evolution. When symbiosis becomes permanent and hereditary, it leads to symbiogenesis or evolution through symbiosis. This entry focuses on the history of the symbiosis theory. Symbiosis research emerged in the 18th century in both botany and zoology, driven by ecological studies of associations between different organisms. Ecological symbiosis research is intellectually rooted in the fields of natural philosophy and natural history. Like the theory of natural selection, theories of symbiosis were initially linked to sociocultural and political ideas about the organizational structure of society, as well as to debates on the nature and redistribution of “common goods” and the “division of labor” in the “economy of nature.” Symbiosis jargon, in part, drove the development of the biomedical and physiological sciences, where scholars commenced research on the influence microorganisms and viruses have on health and disease. Research on the evolutionary impact of symbiosis emerged in the late 19th century, following the discovery of intracellular symbiosis and its role in the origin of cellular structures. This helped pave the way for theories on symbiogenesis.

Symbiogenesis denotes host and/or symbiont evolution through long-term symbiosis. Studied and defined multiple times over in the early 20th century by independently working scholars, including Famintzin, Mereschkowski, Kozo-Polyansky, Wallin, and Lederberg, symbiogenesis was brought to the attention of contemporary evolutionary science from the 1960s onward through the comprehensive works of Lynn Margulis who defined symbiogenesis as “the origin of a new organ, metabolic pathway, behavior, tissue, or other feature as a result of long-term hereditary symbiosis, [. which] includes the process by which organelles of the eukaryotic cell evolved from ancient bacterial symbionts.” Symbiogenesis is today wellrecognized for underlying the evolution of mitochondria and chloroplasts, which are eukaryotic cell organelles that originated from bacteria that engaged in endosymbiotic relationships with some of the earliest nucleated cells, some 2 billion years ago. Not confined to that period in time, endosymbiosis, or the phenomenon where organisms live inside other organisms (endosymbionts live inside a host), is quite common amongst eukaryotic organisms that often carry varied microbial communities in their body cavities and, albeit to a lesser extent, inside specific cells (intracellular endosymbiosis). This entry details the events that led to the formulation and wider academic recognition of symbiogenesis theory, its opposition to certain tenets of the Neodarwinian synthesis, and its integration into the emerging Reticulate Evolution school. As such, this entry presents a historical account of what was once a marginal theory that has now become essential for understanding the evolution of life.

This article explores the relationship between neurodiversity and the life sciences – specifically biodiversity and neurology – in order to call for a more-than-human and more-than-neurological turn in neurodiversity studies. I first examine how Judy Singer’s conception of neurodiversity is based on an ambiguous engagement with biology and directed towards anthropocentric human rights politics. In this conception, neurodiversity constitutes a form of biodiversity without nonhuman animals. This anthropocentric bias in the neurodiversity lexicon reinforces the divide between humans and animals. The article then shows how neurocentrism – the emphasis on nervous systems – in neurodiversity studies often leads to neuroreductionism, which reduces lived experience to the physicochemical. In assimilating neurodivergent people to lesser humans, this rhetoric bestialises neurodivergence. While neurology itself is not fundamentally flawed or regressive, the way it is often taken up in the neurodiversity movement leads to problematic effects, which leads me to conclude that neurological accounts should be decentred. Aiming to renew neurodiversity’s engagement with the life sciences, I call for a more-than-human and more-than-neurological turn. To do so, I turn to ethology and develop the concepts of ethodiversity and ethodivergence. Ethodiversity refers to the intra- and inter-specific variabilities and differences in animal behavioural patterns or existential styles. Ethodivergence describes ways of being and behaving that depart from the ones dominant in one’s species, in one’s ecological and social milieu, and/or imposed by anthropocentric ethonormativity. Both concepts are finally elaborated drawing on conservation biology and philosophical ethology.

The figure of ‘the autistic’ is often characterised as that of an individual trapped in their own bubble, cut off from the ‘real world’, so much so that the mere idea of a specific mode of ‘autistic being-in-the-world’ appears a striking oxymoron. From this starting point, this article explores the discussions around autistic being-in-or-out-of-the-world along with three modes of phenomenology: the anthropocentric phenomenology of animality as “poorness in world”, the existential-humanistic phenomenology of madness and mental disabilities as closure to the world, and the posthumanist phenomenology of radical openness to the material world. Critically engaging with Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory and Henry and Kamila Markram’s Intense World theory, it attempts to lay the grounds for a posthumanist critique of traditional phenomenological approaches to autistic embodiment, both anthropocentric and humanistic. This foray into the metaphoric bubbles of autistics, which denounces the assimilation of autistics with simpler animal forms and the pathologisation of autistic withdrawal into protective bubbles, ultimately aimed to pave the way for an understanding of autism as a radically open and more-than-human mode of embodiment.

À la suite des discussions sur la proximité à la « nature » des femmes et des populations minorisées, les posthumanismes féministes proposent de nouvelles conceptions évitant l’écueil de l’opposition entre vulnérabilité et résilience. Le concept de météorisation, notamment, rend compte de la « vulnérabilité insurgée » des corps aux phénomènes climatiques, entre analyse néomatérialiste de la transcorporéité et description phénoménologique de l’expérience vécue. S’appuyant sur l’idée d’un « climat total », et social et environnemental, il s’agit ainsi de politiser l’expérience vécue de la météo : le personnel est climatique. La notion de corps-météo, inscrite dans ce cadre théorique, permet de rendre compte de l’expérience matérielle et subjective du climat par les personnes autistes. Loin d’une forme de déconnexion, elle révèle plutôt des formes intenses de résilience, d’identification et de plaisir. Elle donne ainsi à voir une distribution différentielle de la (dés)acclimatation, c’est-à-dire du masking et de l’unmasking. Celle-ci doit conduire à éviter tout essentialisme et à générer, au contraire, une politique féministe tournée vers la matérialisation de climats plus favorables à tous·tes, à commencer par les personnes autistes les moins favorisées.

This paper explores the relationship between the problem of dis/harmony in Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory and the inclusion of experiences of disability, disease, or trauma, in said theory. It starts with discussions of dis/harmony and dis/ability in Uexküllian studies, from Uexüll’s very own work on Umwelt theory to the contemporary commentaries and studies of said theory. It first articulates how Uexküll’s focus on harmony provided poor conditions to account for dis/ability, while commenting on points where Uexküll offered direct engagement with or openness to situations of dis/harmony and dis/ability. It then forays into post-Uexküllian research on dis/ease and pathology and suggests that the work of Weizsäcker, Kurt Goldstein and Georges Canguilhem might constitute a useful step aside to allow Umwelt theory better to account for these situations. From then on, the article shows how contemporary investigations into the mutability of Umwelten in the context of the ecological crisis allows for the development of a phenomenology of Umwelt crises and trauma. Finally, the ethological dimension of Umwelt theory is taken up as a way to formulate a philosophy of intra-specific ethological diversity and ethological divergence, and the example of autism is read into the theoretical framework of Umwelt thinking.

L’œuvre de Judith Butler, largement reconnue pour son apport en études de genre, recèle d’ouvertures nombreuses sur l’animalité et à son rôle dans la constitution de l’humain. Construite en patchwork et sans prétention à la systématicité théorique, elle repose, dans des contextes toujours différents, la problématique de la régulation normative de la vie et de la mort. Aussi, c’est en prenant au sérieux la marge constituante qu’y représente la question animale et par la (re)lecture de ses textes consacrés à l’étude de pratiques esthétiques et artistiques, que cet article propose un décentrement théorique pour penser la question politique des corps qui comptent des animaux. Il étudie, de manière comparée, les happenings publics de L214, 269Life, 269 Libération Animale et Anonymous for the Voiceless. Il suggère que les choix esthétiques de ces différents collectifs reflètent et alimentent un certain regard politique porté sur la cause animale et sa finalité aussi bien que sur le genre de subjectivité politique attribuée ou non aux animaux non-humains. Il montre d’abord que les animaux constituent, chez Judith Butler, d’autres corps qui comptent : il s’agit alors d’introduire la diversité des outils théoriques de læ philosophe qui articulent la dimension publique, esthétique et souvent même artistique de la vie des corps avec la question du politique. C’est cette fondation qui lui permet, ensuite, de s’atteler à l’élaboration d’une cartographie des articulations esthético-politiques dans les performances militantes antispécistes. Y sont discutées une esthétique humanimale subversive et critique du binarisme humain/animal, une esthétique de l’« horreur morale » qui appelle au changement de comportement individuel par la mise en évidence de la violence, et une esthétique de la reconnaissance, qui valorise la possibilité d’une égalité radicale entre humains et non-humains dans le partage de la précarité de toute vie et du deuil public de chaque mort.