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speak to the 'average' member of Feinberg's (or any other) society. It has
helped to question previous prejudices against trans people within sections
of the gay and lesbian community, especially in North America, but one
doubts that it's had a wider cultural impact. If I'm correct, then this serves
to demonstrate the continued power of those borders and boundaries that
have been my focus in this chapter, and which Feinberg and others wish
to traffic across. Fiction is a potentially powerful genre for challenging
these divisions. But in this case, its effects on the mainstream have been
limited.
SUMMARY
As the three cases in this chapter show, the process of delimiting and enforc-
ing lines of (supposed) ontological difference can be as contentious as it is
consequential for those involved. Despite their manifestly diverse interests
and goals, we've seen that legal professionals, biotechnology firms, commer-
cial farmers, zoophiles, lawmakers, queer activists and 'trans' spokespeople
have some important things in common. They are, from time to time,
engaged in potentially controversial discussions over where the borders and
boundaries of nature and its collateral terms lie, as well as how secure these
borders and boundaries are. They deploy different discourses and a range of
communicative media in order to shape these discussions and draw them
to some sort of conclusion. Such discussions are, of course, hardly exclusive
to the cases considered in the preceding pages. With a little vigilance, one
can identify similar questions, concerns and arguments arising in a range of
other social, economic and cultural arenas.
Building on the previous chapter's arguments and examples, I've shown
that attempts to
naturalise
boundaries and borders often involve explicit
reference to what are taken to be 'real' differences within and beyond
the realm of nature. I've shown too that these attempts, when scruti-
nised closely, reveal the thoroughgoing
non
-naturalness of boundaries and
borders. Does this mean that borders and boundaries of the sort I've dis-
cussed here can be readily transgressed? The three cases considered suggest
not
, especially the second and third ones. When the law is involved, the
nature/not-nature line can be rigorously policed, leaving trangressors to rely
on persuasion (as in the cases of
Zoo
and
Stone butch blues
). In this light, we
can see why the arguments made by academic luminaries such as Donna
Haraway and Bruno Latour don't find a ready audience outside university
seminar rooms. However 'hybrid' or 'amodern' the world may appear to
these critics, so much of contemporary life remains committed to polic-
and its collateral terms, it seems to me, will remain central to attempts to
regulate thought and behaviour for many years to come - even as trans-
gressive technologies such as synthetic biology become more commonplace
