Biology, Politics, Creativity

In: Perspectives on politics, Band 11, Heft 2, S. 508-511

Abstract

I share the view that biocultural connections should become more central to political inquiry. And I appreciate some of the themes Hibbing develops. The approach considered in this response is one in which variable degrees of agency are pushed deeply into simple organisms, into processes of embryological unfolding, and into subliminal elements of cultural relations. Such an approach appreciates the creative element in evolution as well as in subliminal processes in play within and between us. Several practitioners of complexity theory in biology have been exploring such routes. They may contribute to a more layered set of interfaces between biology and cultural interpretation that are even less reductionist in character. And they may carry import for explorations of how the media work on the visceral register of intersubjectivity, still to be developed.