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Feminism, Autobiography, and Biography.

What is the connection between feminism and biography and autobiography genres? In her biographical article on Evelyn Fox Keller, Natasha Whitton opens up a space to ask this question yet stops short of developing the connection of personalization in both the narrative of Barbara McClintock and the genre of biography itself.

Shifting away from the Thomas Kuhn’s view of knowledge production a dense community of practitioners, Keller uses the biography genre to illuminate the role of recues observer, working intimately with her subjects against the backdrop of a scientific community. McClintock is able to draw out the objective through her subjective experiences with corn - that is her “feeling for the organism.” Indeed Keller explains the personalizing function of the genres when she writes,

Thomas S Kuhn has reminded us that the conversions in science (or resistance to conversion) occur “not despite the fact that scientists are human but because they are.” He chooses to focus attention in the community and the dynamics by which the community forms and reforms itself. Our focus, by contrast will be on the individual, on the “idiosyncrasies of autobiography and personality” that include an individual scientist to a particular set of methodological and philosophical commitments, to resisting or accepting the dominate trend within a field – //but always against the background of the community.// (1983, xxi).

Quoted here is a shift to the micro-bodily/cognitive context of knowledge production. Bringing this into scientific context is like genre mixing. Keller explains, “Even a curriculum vitae is a kind of autobiography. Rudimentary and transparent throu it is, it may reveal deeply personal traits. Certainly my own does; it makes abundantly clear that I have something of a problem with boards: in my peculiar psychic and intellectual economy boarders are meant for crossing” (1995, ix).

In a similar move to that of Harding’s “strong objectivity,” the biography of McClintock includes these local contexts works to overcome the issues with relativism and enchase the objective understanding of the world through particularities of certain situated values that shape dominate modes of knowledge production. The biography or autobiography allows personal experience to challenge hegemonic narratives, in Keller’s case those of science and gender.

Whitton points out, “Keller is walking a tightrope between holding science responsible for a gender-specific relativism while maintaining that objectivity does exist in the abstract and should remain the goal of science whether excused by men or women” (6).

In this way Keller avoids reproducing the soft-feminine and hard-masculine dichotomy, while maintaining the role of science as seeking objectivity. The soft and hard ways of knowing are both important in science and McClintock is a prime example of such. Keller writes,

Yet, what about the biography and autobiography genres? media type="custom" key="24343432" Do the genres avoid reproducing the soft and hard dichotomies? The answer is not direct. Like the recluse researcher, the individual biography must be seen within the backdrop of a larger discourse on McClintock within the community. Yet, there are those who point out Keller does not include enough of "science content.: “…Bentley Glass criticized Keller’s lack of focus on the material research of McClintock’s life. Glass points out that there is not one photograph of a maize chromosome, or of a translocation of segments between chromosomes, or of a nucleolus organizer and nucleolus” (qtd. in Whitton). But what a limited understanding of how scientists can "know." I would like to point out that it is the biographical genre that allows insight into this type of knowledge production, it is pragmatic and I would say subversive (more on autobiography and biography as subversive in fan studies lit. See specifically Lit on Mary Sue stories).

In this sense, does Keller do as much genre mixing as first thought? I think the case is yes, I think that what she is doing is revealing alternative ways of doing science.

“Keller does, however, point to the difference in McClintock's technique which many might term a "feminine" slant. McClintock spent her years of study on the maize plant. While the scientific community moved on to phage and bacteria, she labored in the field harvesting a minimum of two crops a year and spending the rest of her time carefully examining each kernel of her precious yield. Her study of corn was devoted to complete understanding of the organism, not to experimentation directed to discern a particular fact. In her interviews with Keller, McClintock continually emphasized the special relationship that she was able to establish through her work. She felt that she was a part of the corn. She actually got to a point in her career where she could look at the corn kernels and accurately predict the genetic makeup that lay in the genotype.” (Whitton)

Just as McClintock used non-traditional methods to get at the genetic material in corn, Keller is using a non-masculine method of writing to get at alternative forms of knowledge production.

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