Primate visions. . .and revisions! This extraordinary volume
explores the cultural/historical/personal anlagen that have colored
the work of primatologists, anthropologists, paleontologists, et
al. since the turn of the century. We are told that this "will not
be a disinterested, objective study"; that it will be responsible
"to the broad left, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and women's
movements, to animals, and to lovers of serious stories." And so it
is. Haraway (Biology/U. of Cal. at Santa Cruz) brings to her
sociology of science a critical stance that reflects the French
tradition of Foucault and Derrida, the semiotics theory of Eco and
others, and her own unique vision. The result is not feminist
revisionist history - indeed, one of the book's major strengths
lies in revealing the diversity of feminist points of view.
Instead, Haraway peels away at the "stories" scientists have told
to explain the passage from ape to human, from sex (male and
female) to gender (man and woman), from nature to culture. She
accomplishes this through "deconstruction" and "destabilization" of
the accounts of science, reconstructing them "out of context" in
light of major factors affecting observation and experiment. These
factors include colonialism, WW II, postwar decolonization, United
Nations statements on race, the threat of nuclear war, and the
women's liberation movement. Within science are the developments of
ethology, sociobiology, the advent of women fieldworkers in
primatology, fossil discoveries, and the major schools defined by
mentors, disciples, and networks linking campuses and field
stations in America, England, Africa, and Japan. Haraway is superb
in delineating these genealogies and supplying critical
intellectual biographies. She begins with "Teddy Bear Patriarchy" -
embodied in the work of Carl Akeley, the man behind the dioramas at
the American Museum of Natural History, moves on to Yerkes at Yale,
Harlow at Wisconsin, and to Washburn, Devore, Lee and Hinde among
the men, and to Goodall, Altmann, Fossey, Jolly, and Hardy among
the women, telling their "stories" - be they man the hunter or
woman the gatherer. She ends by describing today's western
"groping" for ways to narrate difference - a dilemma reflecting the
persistence of antagonism versus cooperation, group versus
individual selection - illustrating the tensions in a sci-fi plot
of Octavia Butler. Ingenious, formidable (watch that deconstructive
prose), outstanding. (Kirkus Reviews)
What counts as nature in the late twentieth century? How do we
create scientific disciplines and histories of science? How are the
issues of race and gender written into the ways we imagine the
natural world? Why do we study animals? These fundamental questions
are at the heart of primatology - the study of monkeys and apes -
in the twentieth century. In Primate Visions historians of biology
Donna Haraway builds the primate story - our scientific
understanding of apes, monkeys, and humans - and explains its
multi-cultural roots, its myths, its relation to gender and race.
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