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NZ Suekama
A transect is a path along which one counts and records occurrences of the objects of a study
For N.Z. Suekama, Transfeminist Materialism or Materialist Transfeminism is a way to transect, or chart a path to help us account for oppression of the body in a way that is:
A) dialectical and decolonial
B) diverges from immanent, sortitional, unilineal, additive, reductive and other flawed models of feminist thought
C) synthesizes natural science insights with critical theory while maintaining a commitment to material analysis
NZ Suekama sees this as necessary for going beyond weaknesses in Marxism, decolonization, and Black/Third World feminism alike (while still drawing from their strengths)
Fish scales, shingles on a roof, the tips of an asparagus, some flower petals on the bulb of a plant grow or are arranged in imbricate manner. This means "overlapping at the edges."
when two or more things connect or overlap at the edges
NZ Suekama's "transfeminist materialism" argues that every society features several gendered and non-gendered "nexings" of different material/power relations.
It is at these "nexuses" that dominant relations "overlap" (imbricate) so as to stabilize their production and reproduction in a nature-nurture sense.
NZ Suekama's "imbrication" model for understanding gender inequality is influenced by "constructive" views of evolution
Source: Lewontin and Levins' "The Dialectical Biologist"
A constructive view of evolution has four tenets:
1. In complex systems, there is no one-to-one relation between genotype and phenotype. Gene, environment, and "developmental noise" require making sense of a "contingent" set of "pathways" (not linear stages)
2. The "life activity" of an organism defines its niche and influences its traits. Organisms end up "defining" what's relevant about their niche, including through how they "transduce" signals from the external environment.
3) various external fluctuations can be transformed by or even magnified by biological, physical, chemical, behavioral processes within an organism as well as entire populations of organisms. This transformation/magnification includes "planned production that responds to fluctuations in demand."
4. Traits have definite circumstances in which they evolve, but as those conditions are dynamic, so also are traits. So, aspects of phenotype, ie the morphology, physiology, metabolism, and behavior of an organism are constantly "joining together and coming apart to create and destroy ' 'traits'" (pg. 102). This includes "artificial selection" of traits within/by both human individuals and human collectives on behalf of a given interest.
NZ Suekama sees Amilcar Cabral's view of material analysis as a kind of constructive evolutionism
According to Cabral, Class does not appear in generalized, uniform, or spontaneous ways.
Class is a consequence of the "progressive" development of the productive forces and the patterns of ownership and distribution for each given society.
The process of class development is uneven, gradual. After a certain degree of accumulation, class conflict appears.
Internal factors provides the rhythm to this historical process in varied ways. These endogenous forces are always interpenetrated with external ones.
Factors exogenous to a given societal whole can accelerate or slow down the process of class development. Trade, cultural diffusion, as well as conquest, imperialism, slavery, colonialism, and capitalism have sped up the process for some societies and hindered it for others.
Class is not a 1:1 with the material/economic life of a society. Class involves a "contingent" set of "pathways" of development.
Class emerges from a negotiation of internal and external forces (locus of interaction).
This negotiation can include organized responses to and even magnifications of resource fluctuations as well as other, non-ecological/non-economic factors
The characteristics of class society and class conflict are thus dynamic.
Decolonization would mean a society constructing their own niche and place in this dynamic process constructing its attendnt societal characteristics and traits.
For Cabral, the net benefits of accumulation can be made to outweigh the costs if class development is properly managed with "scientific" policy from Anti-imperialist and socialist state leadership. Some feminists agree with this view as well.
In Cabral's constructive view, the "motive force" of constructive societal evolution is Accumulation, which advances the development of the level of productive forces.
For this reason, it is assumed that the "mission" of the ruling class is to use the State to facilitate such development for positive social ends.
Source: "Social Reproduction Theory," Social Reproduction, and Household Production by Kirstin Munro
In bourgeois society, an imperative of endless accumulation links together the relations of the State, capitalist firms, and the household, with immense environmental and social costs.
Additionally, the historical precondition for "endless accumulation" is what Marx called "primitive accumulation" through slavery and colonialism. This process still undergirds capitalism to this day.
For NZ Suekama, taking accumulation at face value renders constructive societal development "overdetermined" by one trajectory of evolution, especially regarding the endogenous and exogenous dynamics of gender relations.
This is why Patriarchy can go unaddressed or minimally addressed in socialist and decolonial struggles.
To read: Engels' "Letter to J Bloch"
For NZ Suekama this flawed one-sided view shows up in Statist and productivist overdetermination of liberation struggles
One consequence of the Productivist emphasis is that many Marxists assume that economic forces dictate non-economic ones, a mistake Engels once admitted he and Marx contributed to.
This is known as a Base-Superstructure dualism. The material base determines the superstructural elements of life.
Even Engels admitted that his and Marx's overemphasis on class was a political one, not scientific one.
To read: Lenin's "The Right of Nations to Self Determination"
Drawing from Cedric Robsinson's "Black Marxism," NZ Suekama argues that when one only understands self-determination struggle with regards to the rights framework (and not with regards to indigenous metaphysics) this makes it a question of a political "instrumentality."
Many Pan-Africanist thinkers have been influenced by the Leninist theory of "self-determination."
Here, national struggles were originally traced to consequences of the bourgeois/democratic transformation of society in a struggle against feudalism
Lenin argued that an "international" coalition in the class struggle could be developed in the successful acquistion by non-Western nations of the right to self-determination.
Realpolitik overstimates the positives of the State and underestimates the embodied costs of accumulation.
In this way, the "Self-Determination" struggle is framed within the parameters of the State as reference point.
NZ Suekama sees this as aimed at making practical use of the accumulation process in the name of anti-imperialist sovereignty. It is a question of realpolitik and not ideology or science
This code is the realpolitik that NZ Suekama critiques.
It is why some Marxists see "superstructural" issues as adapted to the base and can only deal with them as a question of instrumentalization.
Robinson cites a letter from Engels, one addressed to Franz Mehring in Berlin (On Historical Materialism):
"[Olnce an historic element has been brought into the world by other, ultimately economic causes, it reacts, can react on its environment and even on the causes that have given rise to it."
Self-Determination struggles, according to Cedric Robinson, "have failed to conform to the political economic code emergent from capitalist societies" (pg. 65 Black Marxism).
This is despite them involving the structural consequences of capitalist modernity.
Self-determination struggles demonstrate "causal efficacy" vis-a-vis their conditions of possibility. Base and superstructure are actually interpenetrated.
At its most extreme, this distinction is about whether evolution consists of traits that are selected for adaptive ends, or if non-adaptive constraints can themselves have causal efficacy alongside natural selection.
The Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis are not inherently at odds.
Still, one generally sees certain phenomena (like niche construction) as valid evolutionary explanations while the other generally sees these same phenomena as merely "proximate" causes.
NZ Suekama suggests that Marxist difficulties with accounting for causal forces can be understood in terms of divides within bourgeois evolutionary theory.
She points to the Modern Synthesis within biology that emerged in the early 20th century and its points of overlap and divergence with the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis which emerged in the mid-to-late 20th century
This has implications for materialist analysis of gender.
Reticence about the role of non-adaptive constraints in evolutionary change
impact Marxist theories of social reproduction.
The hesitation about the "newer" insights in biology has to be viewed in light of hesitation about "newer" tendencies within social movements that were not instrumentalizable (conducive to realpolitik/"the code")
NZ Suekama argues that "scientific socialism," among Statist Marxists is typically biased towards the biological insights of the "older" conceptual framework that is the Modern Synthesis.
Part of this is because some scientific contributions to the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis came from thinkers like RC Lewontin, Stephen Jay Gould, and others who were more influenced by "neo-Marxist" critical theories.
Source: "Social Reproduction Theory," Social Reproduction, and Household Production by Kirstin Munro
This is how Marxist feminists could theorize the evolution of the nuclear Family: resulting from the dissolution of kinship-based relations and the reintegration of their labors into a sex-based, atomized set of relations.
In Marx and Engels, relations of production are only one side of material analysis. The other side involves reproductive relations.
Reproductive relations involves the "propagation of the species," but is not a question of biological sex-associated traits alone. It is a social process.
A material analysis of species propagation prioritizes how the body's reproduction with/in its environment is socially organized and constructed.
For NZ Suekama many Marxists/feminists assume that the social organization of reproduction is dictated by an evolutionary trajectory of the productive forces (that is driven by accumulation)
NZ Suekama cites Kirstin Munro to identify a few examples in Marxist social reproduction theory that rely on a dualist conception
When gendered social being is said to have had some adaptive basis for its evolution ......
...... this runs the risk of maintaining a dualist focus in how the social reproduction question must be "self-determined."
For NZ Suekama, dualism in this case frames the "parts-wholes interpenetration" involved in the "development" of the productive forces
Source: "Social Reproduction Theory," Social Reproduction, and Household Production by Kirstin Munro
Traditionally, it is the Nurturer (woman) who provides that reproductive labor which allows the Worker (man) to return to the job fed and rested.
Marxism must valorize this domestic labor as something that is key to the process of capital accumulation
In basic Marxist theory, "labor-power" is the actual input from a worker in the productive economy.
But the ruling class can not capture value off productive labor unless the worker as able to "reproduce" oneself in the home through the preparation of food, in resting, care, etc
To analyze the reproduction of labor power is to recognize that low-wage in-firm exploitation (whole) is interpenetrated with the in-house/unpaid labor divisions (part) that allow the proletariat to return to work
Source: "Social Reproduction Theory," Social Reproduction, and Household Production by Kirstin Munro
This is the origin of the stereotype that a Man provides, and the Woman nurtures: and her nurturance is not possible without his provision, just as his provision is not possible without her nurturance (complementarian doctrine).
Some Marxist feminisms focus on the idea of a "household production process" that includes domestic/unpaid labor.
Here, there are two "inputs" from the Homemaker and the Breadwinner simultaneously.
For example, in-house labor relies on commodities purchased with money from waged or in-firm work
To analyze the process of household production (whole) is to recognize how waged/commodity inputs (part) are interpenetrated with the in-house/unpaid inputs (part) in the overall reproduction of the proletariat.
For Marxists, nature alone did not drive an evolution from Hunter-Gatherer to Breadwinner-Homemaker roles
Instead, the basis of a sexual division is in how class society imposes a "rift" in the metabolic life-activity that concerns reproduction.
In Marxist thought, sexual divisions are "naturalized" so that the expropriation of value and accumulation of capital are taken at face value.
This is why people will link modern Breadwinner-Homemaker roles to supposedly premodern Hunter-Gatherer roles
"... redistribution of both monetary wealth and political power from capital to the workers... appears to be conceived of as a stepping stone towards the ultimate end of workers — now broadly defined to also include those engaged in the work of reproducing labor-power — seizing power and centrally planning an equitable form of distribution while leaving the existing production processes intact." - Kirstin Munro
Typically, Marxists find that to resolve the "contradiction" created in sexual relations by the ruling class, the exploited class must take control of the State and the productive process
For Sylvia Wynter, CLR James' Pan-Africanism began to insist on the "autonomy of the body category" particularly for women, peasants, and lumpen struggles.
NZ Suekama finds these insights most useful for her own critiques of patriarchy and the State (realpolitik) as it relates to a constructive view of societal evolution
CLR James' vision for the Seventh Pan African Congress critiqued both bourgeois thought and State socialism.
Building on his thinking, Sylvia Wynter articulates a "pieza framework" for understanding how various "networks of accumulation" impact struggles for bodily autonomy.
Source: "Beyond the Categories of the
Master Conception: The Counterdoctrine
of the Jamesian Poiesis"
For Wynter, the networks of accumulation are "legitimated" through a "master conception" born in modern Western Statecraft.
This dualism can be articulated as the Party's control over the proletariat but has roots in the private property-owning class' dominance over non-propertied classes, as well as in racial and gender/sexual and other forms of oppression
The master conception frames accumulation as the telos of history/evolution. It is derived from modern Western thought.
This Political Reason justifies a division of labor through the notion of a nature-nurture split, a mind-body dualism.
It disguises how accumulation results from the coordination of human (metabolic) life-activity, inclusive of production and exchange, as well as social reproduction, lifeways and culture.
CLR James recognized that a growing elite in the African struggle was using this to justify State management of material life. He eventually rejected nation-statism as a solution and looked to the social movements that were deemed inconsequential for political instrumentality.
Source: "Beyond the Categories of the
Master Conception: The Counterdoctrine
of the Jamesian Poiesis"
"Hiding behind patriotic appeals, the state in Africa imposes injustices and misery... as, of course, it does everywhere else. And patriotism produces the false consciousness --- in which individuals act directly against their own self-interests --- that allows individuals to condone, indeed support, the injustice and misery caused by the state system" (pg 105)
To justify accumulation of wealth and capital, as a response to the inequities of the colonial system, the bourgeoisie and the working as well as other exploited classes ramp up xenophobia within the project of national development.
While Fanon does not critique the State, he does acknowledge "Today, the party’s mission is to deliver to the people the instructions which issue from the summit. There no longer exists the fruitful give-and-take from the bottom to the top and from the top to the bottom which creates and guarantees democracy in a party."
"The working class of the towns, the masses of unemployed, the small artisans and craftsmen for their part line up behind this nationalist attitude; but in all justice let it be said, they only follow in the steps of their bourgeoisie. If the national bourgeoisie goes into competition with the Europeans, the artisans and craftsmen start a fight against non-national Africans."
"... the native bourgeoisie which comes to power uses its class aggressiveness to corner the positions formerly kept for foreigners. On the morrow of independence, in fact, it violently attacks colonial personalities: barristers, traders, landed proprietors, doctors and higher civil servants. It will fight to the bitter end against these people ‘who insult our dignity as a nation’. It waves aloft the notion of the nationalization and Africanization of the ruling classes. The fact is that such action will become more and more tinged by racism, until the bourgeoisie bluntly puts the problem to the government by saying ‘We must have these posts’. They will not stop their snarling until they have taken over every one."
Nkrumah put forth several examples of how neocolonialism could operate. One form is military: “troops of the imperial power may garrison the territory of the neo-colonial State and control the government of it,” but Nkrumah calls this an extreme case.
The term neocolonialism is most popularly associated in the Left with the analysis of Kwame Nkrumah, who authored "Neocolonialism: The Highest Stage of Imperialism."
Nkrumah’s assertion was:
“The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.”
“The neo-colonial State may be obliged to take the manufactured products of the imperialist power to the exclusion of competing products from elsewhere.
Control over government policy in the neo-colonial State may be secured by payments towards the cost of running the State, by the provision of civil servants in positions where they can dictate policy, and by monetary control over foreign exchange through the imposition of a banking system controlled by the imperial power.”
The more common expression of neocolonialism Nkrumah argues, are exercised economically or monetarily
Mbah and Igariwey’s outlook overlaps with that of Nkrumah’s in some ways, although Nkrumah is not anarchist and does not privilege the State as the force which facilitates these contradictions.
On page 84 of "African Anarchism: A History of a Movement," the authors argue that corruption is “directly associated with, and almost synonymous with, the state system.”
Coup d’etat, they further argue, is often preceded by instability generated by manipulation of State structures and institutions “by the ruling elite for the (mis)allocation and (mal)distribution of public goods and services.”
“Because of the economic crises facing them, many African governments have had no choice but to borrow from financial institutions such as the World Bank and IMF” (pg. 87)
Neocolonialism is not just about internal corruption but also externally imposed contradictions.
Citing a scholar by the name of Diagne, the authors highlight five characteristics of indebtedness among African states that range from the integration of African countries into the “international capitalist division of labor,” the economic policies that are “followed within that framework,” the forms of debt and “use of resources” borrowed from abroad, an “armaments race into which Africa has been plunged by imperialism,” and debt rescheduling policies.
Source: African Anarchism - A History of a Movement
“the IMF treatment is designed to help countries with strong industrial bases—countries that overcome liquidity problems through more competitive pricing of their industrial goods. But for African countries with weak or non-existent industrial manufacturing bases, the IMF solution does nothing but stimulate more raw material exports at low prices into a weak world commodity market.” (pg. 88, African Anarchism: A History of a Movement)
“class antagonisms, instability, and economic crisis confront the continent. As the crisis rages on and the prospect of the radicalization of the masses heightens, African regimes have been compelled to react. Some have turned into full-blown dictatorships and become openly repressive; other have tried one form of structural adjustment or another; and still others have experimented with various forms of electoralism. Yet all these are palliatives aimed at temporarily quelling restive workers and peasants, for whom daily life has become synonymous with misery” (pg. 79)
In response to this, the authors suggest that the only alternative to bankruptcy is austerity but “rather than ameliorate economic problems,” austerity measures “exacerbate them leading to inflation, soaring cost of living, rising unemployment and more.” It is at this point where the role of the military and carceral forces becomes prominent, as the consequences of neocolonial economic conditions.
realpolitik - n - policy that is conducted not based on ideology or morals but rather methods to address the immediate contradictions, especially those concerning bourgeois liberalism and modern nationalism
The question of war guided WEB du Bois' "The African Roots of War" which preceded Lenin's analysis of the imperialist basis for early to mid 20th century global warfare.
The du Bois persective informs NZ Suekama in saying "the color line has gender threads"
Part of Nkrumah's definition of neocolonialism contextualizes the matter specifically around the dangers and threat of world war in a politico-economic landscape where many formerly colonized nations are now independent.
The threat of war is central to how NZ Suekama frames the "realpolitik" which sees as rendering constructive societal development as overdetermined in Statist and productivist visions of revolution.
"This competition tends to take the form of a zero-sum game, modified by an arrangement in which the competitors define themselves in ethnic and religious terms—each seeking to protect his own interests."
“[the] pattern of investment generates and depends upon an inegalitarian pattern of income distribution. In turn, inegalitarian income distribution creates far more benefits for advanced capitalist economies than for neo-colonies. The dependent character of the local bourgeoisie restricts its members to servicing foreign capital or to competing among themselves for the limited resources available in the neo-colonial setting"
The crux of our analysis is that the process of class formation in post-colonial Africa looks haphazard and incomplete: it took place only in the commercial and distributive sectors of the various economies, while the agricultural and industrial sectors were left out. This should, however, be understood within the following context: while the comprador class is the foremost beneficiary of Africa’s neo-colonial political economy, various other segments of the local capitalist class also benefit through bureaucratic structures which entitle them to privileges.” (pg. 43, African Anarchism: A History of a Movement)
Different strata use the ruse of ethnoreligious conflict to take advantage of internal and external politico-economic pressures
"In this era of neocolonialism the main homophobes are the masses themselves. Where it used to be the state, the church and other rabid ideologues of patriarchy, now it’s athletes, rappers and the idiot down the tier who somehow feels as if his so-called “manhood” is threatened by how or who another person lives and loves. The unconscious shock troops of patriarchy become the gatekeepers for their oppressors."
-Sanyika Shakur
Sanyika Shakur's analysis is about patriarchal imbrication of neocolonialism and a post-Cold War realpolitik via the rights framework.
Through a form of statecraft Shakur terms "problem-reaction-solution" modern imperialism and capitalism entrench a "good ole boy network" (patriarchy) while framing the Global North and the West as solving the crises entrenched by that network
Non-Western and Global South polities try to defend their sovereignty by mirroring the same process. Those they govern follow suit
For this reason, NZ Suekama says the pitfalls of national consciousness are to be "transected" via the "gender threads" of "the color line."
Through Sylvia Wynter, we learn that Fanon's perspective enables a new understanding of both gendered and non-gendered social being.
Fanon was a psychiatrist from the Caribbean involved in Algerian independence struggle.
In "Black Skin, White Masks" Fanon wrestles with a way to understand the objective basis for his patients' internal mental life.
In "The Wretched of the Earth" Fanon wrestles with a Marxist understanding of decolonial struggles and the postcolonial problem
In both texts, Fanon makes a break with mind-body dualism and base-superstructure dualism by attending to both material and metaphysical concerns.
"... Freud insisted that the individual factor be taken into account through psychoanalysis... It will be seen that the black man's alienation is not an individual question."
(Black Skin, White Masks)
Specifically, a Fanonian view of social being helps NZ Suekama "transect" the costs of accumulation on bodily autonomy
She finds that struggles for bodily autonomy have the causal efficacy on their conditions of possibility. This is key to addressing the pitfalls in nationalism and understanding patriarchy
Fanon did not articulate his Pan-Africanism as anti-State, Sam Mbah and IE Igariwey suggest in the book "African Anarchism: A History of a Movement" the ideas in Fanon's works have anti-State implications.
Therefore NZ Suekama puts Fanon in conversation with James' critique of the master conception, or Cedric Robinson's critique of the code. And she uses Fanon's contributions to understand the constructive evolution of both productive relations and reproductive relations.
"In the colonies the economic infrastructure is also a superstructure. The cause is effect: you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich." (The Wretched of the Earth, p 30).
Sociogeny can be used to foster a non-dualist theory of constructive societal development of the body (and the mind)
Phylogeny refers to studies of organic development at the level of the species.
Ontogeny refer to studies of organic development at the level of the individual.
Fanon had to break with these two perspectives, in order to theorize his patients' experience of racial inferiority complexes in a way that was not reduced to biological or psychological evolution.
He coined the term Sociogeny -- a study of social development, that accounts for psychological/neurological as well political/economic realities alongside natural and ecological conditions at the level of a cultural group.
Relations of production and reproduction are not a 1:1 with phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of the species and organism.
These relations evolve along "contingent" set of "pathways" of development.
(see: "Who's Man Is This - Black Radical Ecology and the Anthropogenic Question")
Drawing from Sylvia Wynter, NZ Suekama also understands the sociogenic principle as itself biologically potentiated
NZ Suekama uses SJ Gould's "biological potentiality" to understand the non-programmed character of aspects of human phenotype (like behavior).
Through sociogeny, NZ Suekama understands structural constraints on biological potentiality.
"Biological potentiality" is a term from the biologist Stephen Jay Gould.
It refers to the available range of possible traits.
For Gould, human traits cannot be determined biologically.
Social structure along with other forces shapes which of these biologically potentiated traits are encouraged.
"The various aspects of the environment are not independent of each other. They tend, rather, to be associated in complexes, so an organism is not exposed to all possible combinations of temperature, humidity, day length, light intensity, and chemical conditions. This allows us to classify types of habitats and seasons. Because of the correlations among environmental conditions, organisms are able to use some conditions as indicators of others or as predictors of future conditions."
- pg 53, The Dialectical Biologist (Lewontin and Levins)
"Thus there arises the possibility that particular factors of the environment evoke responses that are not adaptations to those same factors but to conditions they indicate: the environment is met as information. The statistical pattern of the environment—the frequencies and durations of different conditions—defines the adaptive problems confronted by the organisms living in it and therefore their mode of evolution and the patterns of communities of species."
- pg 53, The Dialectical Biologist (Lewontin and Levins)
Even though Fanon's insights are focused on human evolution, Gouldian biology helped NZ Suekama find an objective basis for a sociogenic principle in general observations about how organisms and the environment are interpenetrated.
This is why she synthesises Fanon's dialectic with theories of constructive development
NZ Suekama suggests that multiple nexing-forms, including a "gendered division" are involved in the corporeal organization of the labor process
NZ Suekama view of constructive evolution draws from Critical Human Ecology: Historical Materialism and Natural Laws as follows:
"... we point not only to dynamics endogenous to historically produced social structure but also those dynamics exogenous to such structure as found in the basic resource, climate, population, and technological factors that form the material conditions for co-evolution.... drawing on what Marx and Engels called the “first fact” of historical materialism, the “corporeal organization” of the labor process, specifically with regard to the various social-ecological metabolic requirements in various ecohistorical periods and regional contexts (Foster 2000; Fracchia 2005; Haila and Levins 1992; O’Connor 1998). Critical work, in this alternate formulation... centers on the investigation of how human beings produce and reproduce their material lives and the constraints and possibilities these productive relations generate."
NZ Suekama coined the term "ecogeny" to describe how, through sociogeny, there is an interpeneration of "corporeal organization" with "various social-ecological metabolic requirements"
The Nexus hypothesis deals with the constructive evolution of both relations of production and of species propagation (reproduction).
For NZ Suekama, the labor process is among many phenomena to be considered re: constructive development in this manner
Phylogeny - evolution and diversification of a group of organisms and their features
Ontogeny - development and lifespan a single organism and its features
Sociogeny - emergence of social and cultural phenomena with regards to specific populations
Ecogeny - constructive evolution of corporeal organization with regards to regional, ecohistorical, metabolic constraints
According to NZ Suekama, constructive evolution is "nexed" vis-a-vis endogenous and exogenous forces at the level of the individual organism.
According to NZ Suekama, constructive evolution is also "nexed" vis-a-vis endogenous and exogenous forces at the level of the whole society.
At both levels, constructive evolution concerns dynamics in four registers of nature-nurture interpenetration
Remember: constructive evolution recognizes contingent pathways of development, as well as transduction of signals and the determination of niches, along with magnifications + responses to fluctuations, and the continued joining together and disassembling of trait presentations.
NZ Suekama's hypothesis is that the complexity in a constructive evolutionary process is negotiated by individual social organisms and whole populations vis-a-vis relations of production and reproduction, in patterns that emerge at the interstices of phylogeny, ontogeny, sociogeny, and ecogeny.
For NZ Suekama, certain social forms emerge that "nex" this complex loci of interaction, stabilizing how populations and individuals negotiate the forces and dynamics that concern the historical material and nature-nurture process of constructive evolution, including both productive and reproductive relations.
For example, in many African communalistic modes of production with kinship/clan-based patterns of social reproduction, Lineality customs tend to be the "nexing" forms whereby certain societies stabilize negotiation of the dynamics of a constructive evolutionary process within which communalism and clan emerge. This helps to anchor the production and reproduction of a given order and its environment
It is on this basis NZ Suekama hopes to transect the evolution of social labor
Imbrication is how NZ Suekama theorizes the rise of patriarchy, Statecraft, and class society.
Imbrication is anchored on a hegemonic nexus
understood as Gender.
As a structural consequence of accumulation, NZ Suekama suggests that a hegemonic "nexing" of life activity anchors dominant material and power relations.
This disintegrates and reintegrates other ways of negotiating and determining the historical material and nature-nurture process of constructive evolution.
For NZ Suekama, this means that the dominant material/power relations "imbricate" at the hegemonic Nexus. Life activity as "nexed" vis-a-vis subordinate relations get disimbricated under this Nexus.
(Transect refers to a line drawn over an expanse of ground used to take ecological measurements)
Nexings are contingent, emergent, non-linear, non-additive phenomena
NZ Suekama cautions against an Adaptational view of "nexings" and of imbrication
This view assumes that features of a society are functionally adapted within a given system and its relations to the environment.
NZ Suekama insists that "nexings" are not Adaptations within a nature-nurture, historical material, constructive evolutionary process.
There is an interpenetration of traits (parts) evolving in the register of phylogeny and ontogeny with those evolving in the register of sociogeny and ecogeny (wholes). But this does not warrant seeing the former as (mal)adaptation to the latter.
Source: "Critical Human Ecology - Historical Materialism and Natural Laws"
Gould suggests that in evolution at the level of phylogeny and ontogeny, many spandrels can be observed. For example, with some snails, they might use an umbilicus to store their eggs. The umbilicus is a structural consequence of the way these snails develop: they grow in a way that is coiled around an axis.
Gould insists that while some snail clades in a "distinct and late arising twig" might use the umbilicus vis-a-vis their eggs, interpreting it through that "function" is inaccurate. The umbilicus does not evolve for this purpose and not all snails use it to that end.
There are many examples of traits and features that are "structural consequences" of overall processes and dynamics in a specific context. These are not adaptations. In Gouldian terms, they can be referred to as "spandrels."
In architecture, if one is constructing a dome to put on top of rounded arches, the process requires four triangular "spandrels" to be constructed as a consequence of the structural demands that come of the shape of the dome and the arches. These spandrels are not adaptations or functional.
Spandrels can be found in material/power relations as well, as consequence of processes in the registers of sociogeny and ecogeny.
The spandrel interpretation is how NZ Suekama "transects" the construction and organization of biological categories in the reproduction of a range of social positions within material/power relations, both gendered and non-gendered.
The use of biological reproduction-associated traits in the historical material and evolutionary construction of the binary is not adaptational.
Just as the use of an umbilicus in Gould's example is not adaptational. It must be viewed as a spandrel (non-adaptive consequence) in a nature-nurture perspective.
Monique Wittig argues that womanhood is not a natural category. Instead, womanhood is an embodied consequence of how heterosexual marriage, domestic labor relegations, and relations of (private) property have socially organized human bodies into "opposite sexes."
Here, the gender binary is not a function of sexual dualism, but rather a mystification of a class-based division of human embodiment which merely presents itself as biological.
Note: Here, the binary is part of a hegemonic "nexing" of communalistic patterns of social reproduction. It's imbrication of class society and the Political order involve a patriarchal dissolution and reintegration of clan-based relations into an atomized social configuration.
Abomination, Pathology, or Identity?
At first, in consequence of a Politico-religious code, sexual embodiment outside of marriage, and even some forms of marital sexuality, were regulated by the idea of "abomination."
Reduced to "lust," non-normative sexual embodiment was associated with a moral or spiritual decline, lumped together with promiscuity, infidelity, homosexuality, cross-gender or mixed-gender behavior, incest, rape, bestiality as characteristic of an uncivilized culture in the Euro-Christian imaginary.
Eventually we get to the mid-20th century. A series of socialist, anarchist, decolonial, anti-fascist, anti-apartheid and feminist struggles have shaken up the Political and economic order. What we now know to be the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans (LGBT) movements emerged within this context. These struggled with the sciences, a consequence of which was a formal depathologization of sexual expansivity.
New labels have had to be coined to define and express what we now understand to be sexual and/or gender identity. These new terms are in constant dialectic with older understandings.
But then, by the 1700s and especially during the 1800s, the Politico-religious code had been more firmly replaced by the secular-scientific Political code. Moral and spiritual discourse was still present, but the new focus isolated so-called homosexual "desire" and often framed it as a "pathology of gender inversion."
Evolutionary and medical theories in particular would begin to establish non-cis/non-heterosexual embodiment as a biological or psychological illness. And they associated it with a civilizational backwardness towards which racial and/or class inferiors were supposedly more prone.
Note: Here, sexual rigidity is part of a hegemonic "nexing" of sexually expansive patterns of social reproduction.
All positions within Christian Europe were "nexed" by a configuration known as Consanguinity.
This meant one's position in society was a permanent status inherited by blood.
Importantly, there is an emphasis on ethnic/religious and cisheternormative "purity" of marital relations to stabilize how status was transmitted and negotiated.
The freeman's unbounded interests became the deictic center of how life-activity was to be organized in the new systems of mercantilism, and later capitalism.
Thus was born Man the Free as the archetype of modern humanness.
This historical shift emerged as Europeans "discovered" slave trading routes and indigenous lands following a long period of attempts at conquest during the Crusades. Religious denominations and political power were reorganizated with Man as origo (frame of reference).
Anchoring this new organization was not just a nexing of embodiment vis-a-vis purity of consanguineal status, but a nexing vis-a-vis the supposed rational character of individual personhood and traits in those who owned/pursued property
Sylvia Wynter argues that "Man" is not some natural product of civilizational advancement.
"Man" is an embodied consequence of the position of the freeman within Christian Europe, a feudal society.
The freeman was neither an aristocrat nor a serf, neither monarch nor clergy.
Unbeholden to the political power buttressed by the church and landed aristocracy's inherited property, the freeman instead had a material interest in accumulation of wealth and private property
Source: "Beyond Liberal and Marxist Leninist Feminisms: Towards an Autonomous Frame of Reference"
As a consequence of the dynamics of Yoruba culture/society (endogenous), an organized understanding of "ado" emerged. Sex-associated trait presentations were understood in a particular way with regards to the patterns of reproduction in Yoruba society.
Later, as a consequence of how those dynamics are complicated by the modern imposition of Western Patriarchy (exogenous), the organized "ado" as a feature of Yoruba relations shifts vis-a-vis the contemporary notion of "gay" and "HIV+" into the "Adodi."
This interaction becomes part of how Black queer men in the Adodi Fellowship would negotiate the conditions of their pathologization and oppression. Members of the Fellowship were trying to stabilize their position vis-a-vis a coercive patterning of biological associated traits, in pursuit of a different set of embodied relations and social norms
In Yoruba culture, the term ado refers to a spiritual understanding of populations who today might be understood as gay men.
During the AIDS epidemic, in response to the particular ways serophobia (bias against HIV poz individuals) was used to pathologize Black people more generally, but Black QTGNC people specifically, an organization called the Adodi Fellowship was formed.
A revival of "ado" mythos, this group used sacred stories about the "ado" to curate a circle of resistance against antiblackness, serophobia, and homophobia as the renamed Adodi.
For NZ Suekama this does not make Yoruba tradition a utopia. It means that the historical material, nature-nurture process of constructive evolution is not "nexed" in the gender-rigid imbrication of the West.
Source:
"Cosmological Queerness Across the Yoruba Diaspora" (by James Padilioni Jr)
Source: "Conceptualiing Gender: The Eurocentric Foundations of Feminist Concepts and the Challenge of African Epistemologies"
Age is the anchoring Nexus in a number of non-Western societies.
Sometimes Age may stabilize patterns in the constructive evolutionary process instead of Gender.
Other times, it may do so alongside Gender.
For Oyeronke Oyewumi, the anchor of material/power relations in Yoruba traditional society is not sex, but rather Seniority.
Kinship is not gender-differentiated and rank is based on chronological age within kinship relations. An embodied consequence of this is that the word "omo" (offspring) is gender neutral.
Further, those born into the kin-group ("oko") hold higher status than those married in ("iyawo") regardless of anatomy.
"Gender" only really takes salience in the context of matrilateralism ("omo-ile"), but the position of this mother-childness ("omoya") is not a matter of subordination
Oyeronke Oyewumi insists that the organization of matrilateral blood ties transcends the household and is not based on conjugal relations. The embodied consequence of this is that motherhood is not an atomized trait that defines so-called "females."
"Iyawo" is also used to describe devotees of the Orisha (deities) in Yoruba religion regardless of gender. Additionally, some Yoruba traditions have transgender priest(esse)s.
Source: "Family Concerns: Gender and Ethnicity in Pre-Colonial West Africa"
This process is distinct from the historical material, nature-nurture constructive evolution of the patriarchal binary in the West, which is organized via the nuclear family, private property and the household under the State, and heterosexual marriage.
For NZ Suekama, at the level of the whole population, negotiation of the historical material, nature-nurture evolution of exogenous forces like slavery yielded the construction of a nexus of imbrication, dissolving an earlier patrilineal and gerontocephalous "nexus" that emerged within endogenous kin-based dynamics, and coercively re-organizing bodies to thread a gendered and age-based reproduction of material/power relations.
According to Sandre E Greene, Anlo society is kinship-based, with an emphasis on extended family ties and the role of elders within a patrlineage.
But, by the 18th/19th century, elder men and elder women began to control the reproductive capacities of both younger women and younger men.
So, headship by elders and patrilineality was reconstructed to imbricate a new, coercive form of authority in the Anlo context.
Greene argues that this was a consequence of the Atlantic slave trade, which brought "increasing pressures" including a "competition for prestige" that had altered Seniority nexus
There is a noted tendency for Age, Lineality, and Caste to be "co-nexing" alongside or even instead of Gender in African societies.
African societies exhibit the world's greatest diversity of embodied gender/sexual spandrels.
There are correlations of this tendency to every region, language, form of social organization, and subsistence practice on the Continent.
"The three most common patterns are gender-differentiated roles, age-differentiated roles, and (more or less) egalitarian or mutual relations, examples of which can be found for both males and females. (Age and gender in general are key bases for social organization, not just homosexuality, throughout Africa.)
The most often reported pattern is that of a social status for males and sometimes females who engage in varying degrees of cross- and mixed-gendered behavior.
(Diversity and Identity: The Challenge of African Homosexualities, pg. 268)"
Stratified and differentiated sexual expanses correlate to societies that exhibit stratification and differentiation in other ways; more or less egalitarian and mutual sexual expanses correlates to societies that are more or less egalitarian and mutual in other ways.
Valence - n -
in chemistry, refers to the combining or displacing power of an atom
In the West, the gender nexus has traditionally held more valence than other co-nexing forms.
Outside the West, non-gendered nexuses have traditionally held valence alongside or in place of gender
One or several Nexuses can hold more or less valence compared to one or some other nexuses.
This is how NZ Suekama theorizes the nature-nurture evolution both sexual diversity and sexual rigidity from a constructive evolutionary and historical material standpoint.
Remember, valence refers to the combining or displacing power of a nexing form relative to other nexuses within a given set of material/power relations
According to Anibal Quijano, modernity can be defined as
"structural articulation of all historically known forms of control of labor or exploitation, slavery, servitude, small independent mercantile production, wage labor, and reciprocity under the hegemony of the capital-wage labor relation"
NZ Suekama builds on this and argues that modernity is a structural re-articulation of the valence of various local nexuses under the hegemony of a western binary gender system and its imbrication of capitalism and Statecraft
Note: these continuums are best understood at the level of direct co-occurrence. But, there are occassions where one or two may supercede the other(s).
The nexus with the most combining/displacing power (valency) stabilizes the modern negotiation of a historical and nature-nurture process of constructive evolution. This emerges in consequence of a certain network of accumulation.
This phenomenon is not an adaptation. Its organization of production and reproduction and of embodiment is not a telos.
The hegemonic Nexus imbricates the dominant set of material/power relations in a manner
that is at odds with environmental sustainability and with general human welfare.
Typically, the binary is oppositionally arranged in this parallel plane.
That opposition is understood to be complementary
Here, sexual Dualism now becomes a fact of nature.
Nature is assumed to be binary/two-form.
This is used to conceal social relations of property and labor
All trait presentations --- physical, behavioral, and more --- are turned into atomistic (individualized) bits.
A nature-nurture spectrum is cut up into parts.
The parts become a causative and linear basis and rationalization of the social order. This is boxed into categories of "sex" as biological and determining of metabolic life-activity
Preformationist theory had ancient roots: in Aristotle, medieval religious scholars, and early uses of Cartesian reduction.
According to Lewontin, the "development" perspective inverted the assumptions of preformationism, especially once cells and genes were better understood.
In many early theories of biological evolution, it was assumed, that the human organism existed fully formed as a "homunculus" within the sperm or the egg.
This is called preformationism, according to "Gene, Organism, and Environment" by RC Lewontin.
Early epigenesis theory by contrast asserted that organisms gradually developed over time. This view would eventually come to define transformational evolutionism.
This is why, today, modern anti-trans movements insist on defining sex around gametes
For NZ Suekama this inverted preformationism asserts that the trajectory of development would or should culminate in a sexually dimorphic Subject of evolution.
Then, in variational evolutionism, the inverted preformationism insists that the trajectory of development would or should be selected for dimorphic Objects of change
Here, the binary (sexual dualism) is not just a fact of nature but a key component of "civilization"
As embodiment is reduced to Sex, embodiment is also harnessed into metaphysical personhood under bourgeois and Western thought.
This is how the body is defined by religious norms and a "humanist" philosophy.
Such an ontology must be expressed through the Household configuration and in accordance to the Law (whether civil or religious)
Today, many anti-trans movements argue that a sex dualism is a relevant and essential factor in Policy
The neurochemical-behavior regulatory mechanism that Wynter describes is otherwise known as an "abduction schema."
This means that whole populations and individual persons will take their spandrels of embodiment as a given (at face value).
Before modern times, hierarchical religions were used to harness gender oppression into a State project.
In modernity, the secular/scientific philosophical tradition works alongside hegemonic religion to enact this process
The notion of a bourgeois liberal social contract and "rights" granted by the State are key in harnessing atomized traits into what it means to be a person under colonial-capitalist Patriarchy.
While this logic/code is typically framed in secular and scientific terms, it also has roots in a process whereby societies wield religion and spirituality as part of a behavior regulatory mechanism.
This behavior regulatory "mechanism" implements socially charted myths neurochemically, according to Sylvia Wynter.
This is why, today, anti-trans movements take on the smokescreen of a culture war and/or are mired in discourses on sovereignty and national security
The modern civilizational hierarchy is expressed in racial-bioreductive organization of embodied spandrels.
Previously it was more religious/spiritual in its expression and character.
As reproduction of social bodies is reduced to "sex," and harnessed into a "metaphysical" notion of personhood under the State, there is also a ranking of spandrels of embodiment
This involves a civilizational hierarchy in which everything is measured or understood against Man as origo (point of reference)
The term "domesticate" can refer to colonization and treatment of nonhuman animals.
It is related to words like "dominate" which refers to control, oppression.
It is also related to words like "dominion" which refers to rule, power.
It is also related to words like "domain" which refers to a territory owned by someone
These words all come from the Latin word "domus" which means "house, household."
Grand Patriarchy imbricates State power with bourgeois exploitation of the earth, non-human animals, and colonized people.
Because of this, societal "development" and modern geopolitical arrangement are violently organized within capitalist relations with a gender nexus as the anchor.
Any analysis of colonialism-imperialism and war must factor Grand Patriarchy into the equation.
Sanyika Shakur speaks of colonial Patriarchy as a "weaponized euro-supremacy."
He terms this Grand Patriarchy. It has impact on indigenous people of all genders through a relationship of domestication.
The misapprehension is a structural consequence of the valence (combining or displacing power) of the nexus by which dominant relations imbricate.
For this reason, NZ Suekama argues that these struggles are part of a historical material and nature-nurture process of constructive evolution.
For NZ Suekama, the worker's, national, gender/sexual struggles are all different attempts for groups and individuals to "self-determine" the conditions of one's embodiment
But, because of the Continuums of Truncation, these struggles run into a misapprehension of how class, race, and gender/sex are interpenetrated.
The valence of non-hegemonic nexing forms in stabilizing of historical and nature-nurture process of constructive evolution is displaced and recombined by the hegemonic Nexus in consequence of accumulation.
Embodiment and life-activity are coerced vis-a-vis Statecraft and the dominant mode of production
For NZ Suekama, truncation anchors an approach to "sovereignty" outside the West that produces what Sanyika Shakur calls "Minor Patriarchy" vis-a-vis non-hegemonic nexuses.
This is in contradiction with a "Grand Patriarchy" that also overdetermines the dynamics which concern non-hegemonic nexing forms and their embodied spandrels.
These two "styles" of Imbrication (grand vs minor patriarchy) entrench the "gender threads" of the color line
Source - Conceptualizing Gender: The Eurocentric Foundations of Feminist Concepts and the Challenge of African Epistemologies
"... the nuclear family remains an alien form in Africa despite its promotion by both the colonial and neocolonial state, international (under)development agencies, feminist organizations, contemporary non-governmental organizations (NGOs) among others.”
- Oyeronke Oyewumi
Sometimes the two wings are at odds, and other times the two wings are cooperating based on what is most politically or economically convenient at a given point in time or a given place
Typically, one wing strives to loosen the gender nexus, the other camp strives to restrict the gender nexus.
But both uphold Grand Patriarchy and/or Minor Patriarchy in imbrication of the material/power relations of a given region, sector, etc.
Both conservative and liberal actors take the conditions that concern the nuclear family as a frame of reference for politico-economic action.
This pattern can be observed in the nexings of both Grand Patriarchy and Minor Patriarchy more broadly (beyond the household)
Very often, truncation visavis the hegemonic Nexus is misapprehended in both progressive and reactionary circles
Sometimes the two spheres are at odds, and other times the two spheres are cooperating based on what is most politically or economically convenient at a given point in time or a given place
Very often, culturally pathologized gender nexings (and non-gendered nexuses) are pushed to the underground or semi-underground
Meanwhile, culturally normalized gender nexings (and non-gendered nexuses) are typically situated either aboveground or semi-aboveground
As household (re)production is anchored, overall societal (re)production is threaded visavis the Grand and Minor Patriarchy as well.
This involves both aboveground (legal, reported, recorded, formal) and underground (illegal, unreported, unrecorded, informal) economic activities and milieus
Very often, truncation visavis the hegemonic Nexus is misapprehended in both the aboveground sphere and underground sphere
3. These embodied "spandrels" can exert causal efficacy over the conditions of their own possibility, especially but not solely vis-a-vis the "nexing" the labor process (relations of production and reproduction)
1. Societies, like organisms, co-construct their own evolution and that of their environments by negotiating endogenous and exogenous forces in a nature-nurture sense.
4. A diverse array of nexing-forms can be identified, that stabilize a variety of material/power relations at the interstices of ontogeny, phylogeny, sociogeny, and ecogeny
2. But not all the constraints and characteristics of this process are adaptive. Some are simply non-adaptive structural consequences of the constructive development process itself.
5. In modernity, the combining and displacing power (valency) of one such "Nexus" has overdetermined embodied negotiations of the complex dynamics of evolutionary co-construction
6. At this "nexus," the dominant material/power relations are imbricate, a process by capitalist society, patriarchy and the State disorganize and reorganize metabolic life-activity
Dualism ensures that spandrels of embodiment are constantly misapprehended as adaptations.
Thereby, the continuums of truncation are further entrenched and maintained by both rulers and the ruled.
This plays a role in how class collaboration & class competition look in the neocolonial era.
The hypervalent "nexus" entrenches an imperative of accumulation, of production, of reproduction, of truncation, that Self-Determination struggles have sought to instrumentalize for emancipatory ends.
For this reason, nationalist "realpolitik" cannot address patriarchy, nor the class contradictions of newly independant states.
State socialism has not provided adequate solutions to this problem due to viewing contradictions in Dualist terms