Closer or beyond of sexual difference. For an alternative feminist epistemology through Elizabeth Grosz and Myra Hird
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Abstract
With the aim of contributing to a reflection on the possibility of an alternative feminist epistemology, this article discusses ideas about nature, the body and sexual difference in two feminist authors scarcely known in the Latin American context: Elizabeth Grosz and Myra Hird. Through the analysis of the influence of Deleuzian thought on both authors, the article suggests the bacterium as a symbol that renders visible the differences between the authors’ thinking. Both authors share however, the fact that their contribution to feminist epistemologies is different to those currently prevalent and epitomised in constructivist takes on feminism. Grosz considers that sexual difference is a sort of meta-principle that, once randomly appeared, re-organises the modes in which nature evolves, becoming the guarantor of the emergence of incessant difference. The bacterium figures in this form of thinking as the residue of a previous and not creative way of reproducing. On the contrary, Myra Hird suggests that a bacterial ontology represents, to a certain extent the future of nature, insofar as naturally queer, and unconcerned by sexual difference as a reproductive mechanism, bacteria are the beings with a better chance of survival. Both authors contribute to an alternative view of feminist constructivist epistemologies, critically considering nature, the body and sexual difference, which are central to feminism.
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