Posthumanism and the nature-nurture debate

”A new pedagogy – and therapy - of time and place is beginning to take shape” (Birkeland 2005: 59). This new pedagogy of place is concrete and subjective, with an origin, a history and geography of lived life. It is a new pedagogy for human beings for resituating our selves (”nurture”) in ecological terms and the non-human (”nature”) in ethical terms. It means to stop treating the nature-nurture debate as an either-or question and instead ask how human beings are becoming alongside many other species and life-modes.

Is it too much for hope for? Well, it depends on whether we avoid a gynocentric view of society, or an uterine social space, which Henri Lefebre (1991) calls it, and how the transition from modernity´s abstract space to a utopian, differential space develops. There is a potential connected to a restoration of meaning in space and the feminine principle that started with the women´s movement some decades ago. A reawakening of the female principle seems, however, today to take the form of a symbolic revenge that only reverses the problem, by creating just another form of repression. Sadly, what I see is that it is possible for women to harass men publicly and still be judged politically correct. (It is impossible for men to do the same against women without being blamed sexists and male chauvinist pigs). And, it is politically correct to insist on the social construction of gender. (It is a corresponding taboo to talk about the natural becoming of sexed bodies). Yes, I am referring to the nature-nuture debate in Norway this winter, and the enigmatic absence of wise woman talk. Please, where are the posthumanists and the ecohumanists among feminists and social scientists in Norway? Read Donna Haraway´s book "When Species Meet" and let us have a more constructive debate.