Mike Michael

The Heart of the Matter: Animal Bodies, Ethics, and Species Boundaries

This article addresses some of the ways in which the development of xenotransplantation, the use of nonhuman animals as organ donors, are presented in media accounts. Although xenotransplantation raises many ethical and philosophical questions, media coverage typically minimizes these. At issue are widespread public concerns about the transgression of species boundaries, particularly those between humans and other animals. We consider how these are constructed in media narratives, and how those narratives, in turn, rely on particular scientific discourses that posit species boundary crossing as unproblematic.

Constructing a constructive critique of social constructionism: Finding a narrative space for the non-human

Abstract This paper is intended to serve as a critical contribution to the growing literature on the social constructionist social psychology. If social constructionism has tended to narrate its emergence in the intellectualist terms of the “linguistic turn,” the paper suggests a number of alternative stories that identify within social constructionism a narrative space that can accommodate the “non-human.” The first of these alternative stories examines the implications of recent debates around the issue of reflexivity. The second, while taking seriously the notion that SCSP is postmodern, reflects upon what it means to be postmodern and in the process expands the horizons within which SCSP can be practised. A third story is an exercise in embedding SCSP in an historical and institutional context: what are the “pressures” that, on the one hand, have enabled SCSP and cognate disciplines to differentiate themselves from others, and on the other, are perhaps forcing them into closer alignment with seemingly incommensurate (realist or positivist) perspectives. A theme that emerges from these three critiques is the narrative (or analytic) posture of “principled unprincipledness” wherein practitioners of SCSP can retain a political principle whilst eschewing epistemological principledness. This approach is exemplified in the final, concluding section, in which I tentatively suggest that Actor-Network Theory can accommodate both the constitutively non-human and the socially constructed as interacting efficacious actors.

THINKING THE UNTHOUGHT : TOWARDS A MOEBIUS STRIP PSYCHOLOGY

Abstract This paper sketches an alternative to two of the key polar perspectives in contemporary social psychology, namely cognitive psychology and rhetorical psychology. In contrast to the ‘closed fist’ of the former, and the ‘open hand’ of the latter, we counterpose the ‘invisible arm’ of the unthought. By this, we mean that prior to these modes of thought, respectively individualist and socially embedded, are non-rational modes of thought. We explore this third mode with reference to the work of Heidegger on ‘shattered thought’, Foucault’s ‘thought from the outside’, and Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomics. After considering the usefulness of the Gibsonian notion of affordance, we examine how recent work in the sociology of science on human/non-human assemblages variously known as hybrids, cyborgs or monsters might be brought to bear on the issue of the unthought. In particular, we suggest that the ideas currently being developed by the likes of Latour and Haraway (and theorised by us through the metaphor of the Moebius strip) can be used to locate the irruption of the unthought in both the internal (mental) and external (the technologised world), entailing both the material (corporeal) and semiotic.

The hiss of history and the sigh of psychology

Robert M. Farr, The Roots of Modern Social Psychology. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. £40.00 (hbk), £12.99 (pbk), xvii + 204 pp. Graham Richards, Putting Psychology in its Place: An introduction from a critical historical perspective. London: Routledge, 1996. £40.00 (hbk), £12.99 (pbk), x + 197 pp. Daniel N. Robinson, An Intellectual History of Psychology, 3rd edn. London: Arnold, 1995. £14.99 (pbk), viii + 381 pp. MIKE MICHAEL HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 10 No. 2

Reviews : Michael Billig, Arguing and Thinking: a rhetorical approach to social psychology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989 (1987), paper £9.95, vi + 290 pp

Leavises, so summarily excluded by current criticism, are given a fashionably bad time by Mulhern in ’English reading’. By ignoring the methodological stricture against projecting current morality into historical judgements, he paints the Leavises as proto-Thatcherites extolling the virtues of the lower middle classes. Given the well-attested snobbery, exclusivity and insularity of the literary world they inhabited it seems to me very reasonable ground on which to stand, and if as Mulhern argues they confused their Englishness with universal value, this is more a matter of anthropological interest rather than moral weakness or intellectual error. The critical analyst who wishes to address text as simply discourse, whose only context is current, cannot also reasonably belabour history for its lack of contemporary insight. Staying with the elaborations of Englishness Barrell’s carefully researched and well-constructed essay on ’Joshua Reynolds and the Englishness of English art’ combines tight analysis and argument with fascinating detail of period debates. Finally, Sneed’s essay on the problems of Europeans approaching African literature tackles the basic anthropological problem of the language of the cultural other, and our access to it. In a discussion that shows creative imagination, and sensitivity to the basic elements of intercultural contact, Sneed has the simple courage to leave the insoluble questions open. This is an essay that all students of comparative culture could profitably dwell upon. I have not mentioned all the essays but have tried to convey something of the variety of subject and orientation tackled by the contributors. I enjoy risk-taking, frontier books, which engage and may irritate. Bhabha has assembled an excellent collection on a topical theme. This book combines first-rate scholarship with intellectual energy and panache. It is, dare I say it, a rattlin’ good yarn.