Body
Whose body do we mean when we use the term body?
The term used in the singular on its own like this indicates a missing assumed modifier: human, the anthropo in Anthropocene.
When we see this word, do we imagine a chalk outline on the sidewalk?
Do we imagine the drowned body of an asylum seeker?
Do we imagine an anatomical diagram?
Do we imagine Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man?
Does the body we imagine have a vulva?
Generic bodies in text and image are often white and male (with cisnormative muscularity) even though most bodies in existence are not like that.
We’ve got an issue with bodies to address now that we find ourselves living in the Anthropocene. There are some things that have to be brought together and sorted through. One is the body as understood via social theory, which lacks materiality and includes so much potential possibility that it can be shaped in so many ways. The other is the body as represented in biology, which is material and part of the animal kingdom.
In the Anthropocene, the materiality of bodies becomes impossible to ignore for more and more people, even for those who never liked science. The global environmental crisis prompts us to think about what our bodies cannot withstand in terms of our environment, about the fragility that is a result of our survival being dependent on being within a relatively narrow range of temperatures, breathing a particular balance of nitrogen to oxygen, experiencing a limited range of air pressures, eating non-toxic food and water and the fact that we must let our guard down and sleep from time to time. Such things are already well established because bodies have been a subject of study for a long time.
Can we avoid the reductionism and essentialism that have characterized much past human biology whilst gaining a more detailed understanding of bodily vulnerabilities in a world that is changing? Our bodies have always been open, responsive to, co-constituted by and in feedback-loop ecological relationships with environments of all kinds (social, biotic, built). Those effects are made ever more visible now, in the Anthropocene, when we can see macro-level effects on the world (polar ice caps melting, sea levels rising) and effects on living bodies and human lives (climate migration, deaths from severe weather incidents); these are the effect of the actions of ourselves and our industrial ancestors. Like our anaerobic bacterial ancestors of the Paleoproterozoic era, we are destroying our world. It is not uniquely human to cause ecological catastrophe in this way. Maybe we take after these ancestors more than we might think at first glance?
Our lives are still entwined with those of microbes, of course. Despite the fact we have acted so combatively against microbial life by popularizing antimicrobial hand gels and have entered into an arms race with increasingly virulent anti-biotic resistant microbes, we need microbes inside and on the surface of our bodies in order to survive. Indeed, we have never been without them. Life on earth so often is comprised of combinations of life forms in fact. Nearly every single example of plant, fungus and animal on earth relies on microbial life within it (mitochondria) to survive. Human genomes contain countless sections of microbial DNA, and, whether calculated by cell count or by biomass, a large proportion of each human body is microbial cells. What are the implications of a closer look at the materiality of our bodies, giving attention to who (else) lives in, on and alongside our bodies? Whose survival matters most? Can our survival be separated?
Environmental justice and reproductive justice have deep interconnections. The term reproductive justice combines reproductive rights and social justice into a single concept that includes the human right to personal bodily autonomy, freedom from sexual violence, the right to choose whether to have children or not, to have equal access to safe abortion, affordable contraceptives and comprehensive sex education, and the right to parent the children one has in safe and sustainable communities. The connection between environmental and reproductive justice exists, for one, because ecofascists use and have used Malthusian eugenic logics to counter reproductive justice arguments. It is also the case that some environmentalists see human reproduction as being in conflict with the reproduction of other life forms on earth and think the rights of other life forms need greater consideration. We also know that environmental damage threatens those already struggling for reproductive justice because of global structural inequalities. Reprotoxic exposures, both occupational and environmental, whether from chemicals in plastics or lead, are a threat to poor people more than wealthy ones. This is because wealthier people can make ‘healthy’ consumer choices and avoid toxic products. They live in less polluted environments and have fewer harmful occupational exposures compared to, for example, slum dwellers in the Global South, who may engage in waste picking for a living and have to drink polluted water. What is more, in the case of a problem, the wealthy can pay for the reproductive services they need from IVF doctors and labs, from gamete donors and even from gestational surrogates.
The threat that reprotoxicity represents awakens fears in many people. Increasingly in the past decades, moral panics have been whipped up about changes to reptile and amphibian genital morphology and behaviour reportedly due to hormones from oral contraceptives excreted in urine entering waterways via sewage systems. These arise entangled with sexism, homophobia and transphobia but speak to the varied political potentials as a result of fear of environmental degradation. How can we take action about these reproductive justice concerns without undermining the rights of LGBT people and straight cis women?
Attention to bodily difference (without sexist, racist or other forms of essentialism) can help us to see the environmental justice perspective on bodies and the Anthropocene. Who benefits more from this catastrophe and who suffers more? Can we separate understandings of suffering from oppressive normativities and moralizing that sometimes lurk in biomedical and ‘healthy living’ discourses? What would have to change to be able to mobilize to protect the bodies that are most vulnerable?
Read the published version in Connectedness: an incomplete encyclopedia of anthropocene
