The human being and its limits

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Jami Weinstein challenges our picture of the human and the inhuman. As a theoretical philosopher, she focuses on the really big questions: What is life? What is a person?

An orchid attracts a wasp with false promises of sexual benefits. Weinstein illustrates the phenomenon as an example of transsexualism, where even species boundaries are crossed.

It was when she discovered a mistranslation of “transgender” from English to French that she started down the path of her current research. The word was translated as “transgenre”. She found that the word gender and genre had a common origin in the Latin genus. The words for sex, type, race, family, and species, in other words, lie etymologically close enough to trip over each other.

Weinstein is a philosopher and researcher in gender studies. She heads the research group in zoontology. Ontology is the science of existence, and “zoo” means that it deals not only with human existence, but that of animals as well. The first time we spoke, her dog had just died at the age of 17. “It’s tough,” she says. “Loss is difficult.”

Weinstein challenges our picture of humans as unique and separate from other creatures on Earth. In her research she attacks the big questions: What is a person? What is life? To understand this, we need to look in the borderlands and over the borders, she says. We have to go outside what we perceive as the limits of the human, turn things we take for granted upside down and break up strict divisions, not just between sexes, but also between species.

“The humanism we inherited from the Enlightenment describes man as rational and independent, a free individual responsible for his or her own decisions.” It’s also the image of humanity that lies at the foundations of neoliberal political ideology.

However that picture is starting to crack, she continues. We’re not as rational and free as we might think. We’re governed by our feelings and depend to a great extent on our surroundings.

In a large research project called “Conflict Zones: Genocide, Extinction, and the Inhuman”, the limits for the eradication of humanity and other species are being studied. The project involves some 40 researchers from several countries and across many different disciplines.

“The area of conflict can mean both politically troubled areas, and the fact that people are in conflict with large parts of their surroundings: climate, environment, energy, finances; in several areas we’re seeing systemic conflicts that threaten to lead to collapse.”

“All species become extinct sooner or later. This also applies to humans. If we truly realised that, I think it would change our way of living and view of the world.”

As a philosopher, she sees her task not just as finding the truth, but also using it to improve human life. She uses her theoretical reasoning to analyse political and ethical issues. On the other hand, she does not take part in empirical studies.

“You attach such great importance to empirical studies here in Sweden,” she says. “You seem to think all serious research should rest on empiricism. However this is also a limited approach originating in the Enlightenment.”

She criticizes the classical picture of the scientist who finds truth through objective observations of reality.

“The observer is a part of the process, and there’s no such thing as objectivity,” she argues. An empirical study proves nothing. A hypothesis is still required, and good arguments must be developed. These in turn govern how data is chosen and analysed.

“Of course I look at empirical studies. But empiricism can’t answer my questions.”

She also argues that her research is not especially market-oriented, which doesn’t mean, however, that it’s of no use. Quite the opposite. One example is the question of whether society should support medicines that increase potency, like Viagra, against medicines for birth control like the pill. An analysis of what is genuinely human is needed here.

“Both aim at the same thing, namely worry-free sex. However we quickly run into the question of what is human and normal. Is it “normal” to want to have sex without the risk of getting pregnant? Is it “normal” for an older man who has lost the ability to get an erection to want to have sex?

“With my research, I hope to be able to change a number of preconceived notions, and thus contribute to changing people’s way of thinking."

The words genus, gender, and genre are also related to the word generic. Categorising living creatures based on their sexual functions is limiting, she writes (take that, Linnaeus.) “After all, sexual reproduction constitutes only a small percentage of all reproduction of living creatures on Earth.” Crossing borders is more typical of reproduction, or as she writes, “the transspecies, transversal, transducing, transgressive transmission of genetic material”.

Weinstein emphasizes our mutual dependence and everything that unites all creatures on Earth. She speaks of “interviduals” instead of “individuals”. In conformity with post-humanistic gender research, she wants to take feminism and gender research out of and away from the curse of categorisations.