Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Jurassic Park
. Even 'immutable immobiles' travel because they are repre-
sented in mobile or multisite media like television advertising (think of
aquariums, for example, which need to be widely promoted in order to
attract enough visitors). Immutable (im)mobiles travel from, and through,
long-distance material infrastructures so that various epistemic communities
and the wider public can, if they wish, encounter them. When, however, one
epistemic community takes an interest in the representations and practices
of another, it will necessarily make sense of them according to its own needs
and the demands of the genre it operates within.
There are countless examples that can illustrate how representations of
nature travel between epistemic communities, only to be reframed and rein-
terpreted once they've 'arrived'. Let me focus, not for the first time, on just
two. In 1999, the Canadian biologist Bruce Bagemihl (1999) published a
work of popular science entitled
Biological exhuberance: animal homosexual-
ity and natural diversity
. The volume surveyed scientific studies of over 300
species and showed that homosexual and bisexual behaviours are common
among animals. On this evidential basis, Bagemihl proposed a theory of
sexual behaviour in which reproduction is only one of its principal func-
tions. He hypothesised that group cohesion and the lessening of tensions
between animals, seen, for example, among bonobos, are other important
functions of sexual behaviour. Unsurprisingly,
Biological exuberance
garnered
a lot of attention within and without the community of animal biologists.
As we saw in my Preface, even today many people believe that heterosexual
behaviour is 'normal' because it's 'natural' - a belief that Bagemihl's book
sought to challenge on factual grounds.
Among the various places where
Biological exuberance
was reported and
its claims represented were the British popular science magazine
New Sci-
entist
and the Oslo Museum of Natural History (OMNH) in Norway.
Bagemihl's book was discussed in a major article published in the for-
mer in the year of its publication (Vines, 1999). Gail Vines, the article
author, writes in a 'balanced' way about the topic, focussing on the evi-
dence for and against Bagemihl's thesis. Seven years later, after the fuss
about
Biological exuberance
had died down, a far smaller audience of visitors
to the OMNH encountered Bagemihl's ideas anew in an exhibition enti-
tled 'Against nature?' Unlike Vines's article, the curators wanted to provoke
visitors to think explicitly about homosexuality in humans (with a view to
challenging homophobia). To quote from the exhibition website:
Sadly, most museums have no traditions for airing difficult, unspoken, and
possibly controversial questions. Homosexuality is certainly such a question.
We feel confident that a greater understanding of how extensive and common
this behaviour is among animals, will help to de-mystify homosexuality among
people. At least, we hope to reject the all too well known argument that homo-
sexual behaviour is a crime against nature.
