Evaluating Elizabeth Grosz’s Biological Turn (Article)

Abstract

Elizabeth Grosz’s interpretation of Darwinian evolutionary the- ory to ground a feminist ontology of biology has been particularly controversial. Most critics have understood Grosz to support her theory with empirical evidence, and they criticize her for being ei- ther inaccurate or uncritical of and overly dependent on science. In contrast, I argue that Grosz reads Darwin as a philosopher in a Deleuzian and Irigarayan sense, and that Grosz’s project is therefore better understood in terms of its ethical and political goals rather than in terms of empirical adequacy. I conclude that Grosz fails to deliver an entirely satisfactory feminist ontology of biology, but that her work is valuable for the way it maintains ethical and political considerations in feminist ontological debates.