Becoming Undone: Darwinian Reflections on Life, Politics, and Art

by Elizabeth Grosz

In Becoming Undone, Elizabeth Grosz addresses three related concepts-life, politics, and art-by exploring the implications of Charles Darwin’s account of the evolution of species. Challenging characterizations of Darwin’s work as a form of genetic determinism, Grosz shows that his writing reveals an insistence on the difference between natural selection and sexual selection, the principles that regulate survival and attractiveness, respectively. Sexual selection complicates natural selection by introducing aesthetic factors and the expression of individual will, desire, or pleasure. Grosz explores how Darwin’s theory of sexual selection transforms philosophy, our understanding of humanity in its male and female forms, our ideas of political relations, and our concepts of art. Connecting the naturalist’s work to the writings of Bergson, Deleuze, and Irigaray, she outlines a postmodern Darwinism that understands all of life as forms of competing and coordinating modes of openness. Although feminists have been suspicious of the concepts of nature and biology central to Darwin’s work, Grosz proposes that his writings are a rich resource for developing a more politicized, radical, and far-reaching feminist understanding of matter, nature, biology, time, and becoming.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Feminism, Science, Politics

280 pages, Paperback

First published July 27, 2011

About the author

Elizabeth Grosz is a professor at Duke University. She has written on French philosophers, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray and Gilles Deleuze.

Grosz was awarded a Ph.D. from the Department of General Philosophy at the University of Sydney, where she became a lecturer and senior lecturer from 1978 to 1991. In 1992, she moved to Monash University to the department of comparative literature. From 1999 to 2001, she became a professor of comparative literature and English at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She taught in Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University from 2002 until joining Duke University in 2012.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Justin Abraham · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary book that goes in the changes-my-way-of-thinking-category forever.
Grosz is erudite but writes so transparently. It's a pleasure. No pretension and you can tell she's enjoying it.

Brilliant on the 'life' of events, "the life of animals and plants, the life of inhuman forces, the life of concepts, the life of sensations which impinge on and entwine, co-actualize, with human life" (35).

Life and becoming which is interaction with matter, and the subject's freedom through an immersion in materiality.

Feminism as now focused on "freedom to" not "freedom from".

The division of sexual difference into at least two types is the way the dynamic natural world has produced endless variation and difference. Sexual selection allows the leaf to have 'another life', no longer bound up with the tree's capacity for survival but now a part of the bird's sexual life.

The Umwelt - the organism's soap bubble world which its receptor organs allow it access to but deny, always, complete access for all organisms.

Art is the linkage of bodies to the forces of the earth. Architecture is the first art because without cordoning of territory, nothing can be extracted, nothing can resonate, intensify, effect. (171)

[Margaryta · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book I'll be coming back to. Part 1 is excellent and also the most densely theoretical (and yet another sign that I should probably read Bergson directly). I took issue with Grosz's defence of Irigaray, especially because some of the points only emphasized those parts of Irigaray that were accused of being homophobic and Eurocentrist. Chapter 7 is the guilty culprit for me in this book. It is where Grosz misinterprets ecofeminism, intersectionality, and Butler's discussion of the nontraditional family in a way that reinforces the reading that families are still about biological continuity rather than kinship in other possible forms. A book hat is useful in sections and for different purposes, but not one to toss aside by any means.

[Alex Prong · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actively hated parts of this, actively loved others. I think I mostly just can’t get down with Irigaray and I don’t buy Grosz’s arguments against Butler’s critiques of Irigaray at all. The more I try to write this review the more I’m like.. I guess the part of this book I didn’t like is the whole premise? The main thing? The main part I hated. But some little parts were so beautiful and compelling… if only it weren’t for the main part

[Xinyi]

somewhere between Bergson, Deleuze & Guattari and Bradotti, Bennette and Povinelli; a bit disappointed with her use of Irigaray

[Jes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up about a year ago and finally finished it. I just love Grosz. Why can't everyone write this eloquently? Feminist theory + new materialism + feminist phenomenology + lots of Darwin.