{"product_id":"natural-lection-volume-80","title":"Natural Lection Volume 79","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA radical deconstructive approach to evolutionary theory\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor as long as there has been evolutionary science, thinkers in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities have battled over whether evolutionary theory can or should provide insights into human nature and culture. Yet even the dissenters tend to agree that there is, somewhere, a natural foundation of instinctual or genetic inheritance; the debate is only whether and how human culture is an exception from it. \u003ci\u003eNatural Lection\u003c\/i\u003e complicates this fundamental boundary as it exposes how our scientific knowledge of nature rests on a faulty foundation that must be supplemented by humanist thought.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJonathan Basile, as part of the emerging movement of biodeconstruction, extends the work of Jacques Derrida into the life sciences as he parses writing on cultural evolution to reveal the contradictions within our opposing notions of genealogically governed nature and networked or viral human culture. Holding this opposition in suspense, Basile proposes a new framework: natural lection, the view of nature not as original material but as the result of a shifting, always provisional act of \u003ci\u003ereading\u003c\/i\u003e. By paying careful attention to what biologists describe as a superficial layer of metaphor and rhetoric in their writing – but which he sees as an ineluctable textuality shaping the core of their work – Basile traces the political implications of scientific thought to its theoretical fragility, which calls for philosophical and literary modes of reading.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShowing how contemporary approaches to cultural evolution continue to repeat incoherent patterns of thought at least as old as Darwin – if not Aristotle – \u003ci\u003eNatural Lection\u003c\/i\u003e dismantles assumptions shared by evolutionary biology, cultural studies, and new materialism. By critically analyzing these foundations, Basile pushes back against the neoliberal and far-right weaponization of evolutionary theory, opening a novel terrain of scientific and political possibility.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eRetail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Minnesota Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56672945897816,"sku":"9781517919986","price":28.5,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9781517919986.jpg?v=1771669852","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/natural-lection-volume-80","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}