Molecular Feminisms: Biology, Becomings, and Life in the Lab

by Deboleena Roy

"Should feminists clone?" "What do neurons think about?" "How can we learn from bacterial writing?" These and other provocative questions have long preoccupied neuroscientist, molecular biologist, and intrepid feminist theorist Deboleena Roy, who takes seriously the capabilities of lab "objects"―bacteria and other human, nonhuman, organic, and inorganic actants―in order to understand processes of becoming.

In Molecular Feminisms, Roy investigates science as feminism at the lab bench, engaging in an interdisciplinary conversation between molecular biology, Deleuzian philosophies, posthumanism, and postcolonial and decolonial studies. She brings insights from feminist theory together with lessons learned from bacteria, subcloning, and synthetic biology, arguing that renewed interest in matter and materiality must be accompanied by a feminist rethinking of scientific research methods and techniques.

The open access edition of Molecular Feminisms is available thanks to a TOME grant from Emory University, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

DOI 10.6069/j163-3c90

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Feminism

282 pages, Paperback

Published November 20, 2018

Reviews

[Tomás Narvaja · Rating 4 out of 5]

An impressive work of feminist literature that takes seriously the call to expand on well-developed feminist critiques of the sciences to begin to consider how feminists might not just mine scientific data and use it for feminist theory, but go further to develop feminist research practices that can be used in molecular biology labs.

While at times I felt her analogies could have gone further and felt half-baked (I felt she could have expanded more on bacterial sex) or her critiques were unwarranted (such as part of her critique of Vicki Kirby, although I did agree with her critique that Kirby should be citing more scientific literature in the field), in the vast majority of the book, she successfully comments on the very real possibilities and ways one might enact molecular feminisms. This is very much cutting-edge work in feminist science and technology studies. She touches very beautifully on the methods of cloning and how feminists might use similar methodologies, the role of bacterial labor in scientific discoveries, and the complexities that emerge in the creation of synthetic life and synthetic ecologies.

One of my favorite examples was her explanation of the hierarchical understanding of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Gonadal (HPG) axis with the hypothalamus as governing everything below it, and her own feminist approach to challenging that understanding. This encouraged her to look for feedback mechanisms, specifically estrogen receptors in hypothalamic neurons. This was a possibility that few, if any, scientists at the time she was conducting her research would have seriously considered even possible. This example explicitly shows the value of feminist theorizing for molecular biology, as well as the "molar" or larger socio-political implications of these molecular insights for reproductive justice movements and understandings of estrogen-based medications, such as contraceptives or hormone replacement therapy

Lastly, while a reader unfamiliar with Deleuzian philosophy and the feminist theorists she cites (Barad, Haraway, Kirby, Groez, etc.) might struggle a bit to fully understand her writing, she provides a great introduction and glossary of terms at the end of her book that I think could successfully guide any reader through her work as long as they read slowly and carefully, which is important to be able to pull out the invaluable insights Roy discusses.

edit:
I learned the estrogen receptors in hypothalamic neurons Roy found used immortalized cell lines. Roy's research used GT1-7 GnRH neurons. These cell lines used are in a sense, weird, and promoter-driven. They are not “real" GnRH neurons (i.e., representative of GnRH neurons in vivo). For example, a lot of study into these cell lines originally suspected they were pacemaker cells, but it turns out they aren’t (GT-11 and 1-7 cell lines). They are not representative of real neurons. They are injected with gene that immortalizes them, and as a result of that, they express genes that normally wouldn’t be expressed. This is why Roy's research was never followed up on in my opinion. It is an unfortunate result of segregation where scientists with this knowledge are not exposed to feminist thinking and thus cannot provide corrections and where feminists with these theories do not have enough knowledge on the scientific topic at hand to point out errors (e.g., what other feminist academic knows this much about GnRH neurons to point this out?)

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

In "Molecular Feminisms," Deboleena Roy brings together molecular biology and feminist science and technology studies through a Deleuzian lens. Through a critical method termed "stoloniferous thinking" (after grass stolons, horizontal stems that spread across the ground and put out roots and shoots to anchor the plant's new growth), Roy explores connections between the practice of science, scientific technologies (particularly molecular biology), and the work of feminist theorists and feminist STS scholars (including Haraway, Barad, Stengers, McClintock, Groez, and many, many more). Roy also outlines concrete feminist scientific research practices that are widely applicable throughout the natural sciences. While Roy has attempted to write a book legible to both scientists and humanities scholars, but it's so high level on both accounts I fear that nobody can understand it. Or, at the very least, I don't understand a lot of this book and I have graduate level training in both the biological sciences and feminist science and technology studies-- always so much more to learn and understand. The parts of this book I can follow, I really love-- particularly Roy's feminist STS practice "Sub/FEM/cloning" (which articulates how scientists can put various types of feminist dilemmas in their scientific practice into conversation with politics, seemingly-distant disciplines, etc.) and her overarching methodology of stoloniferous thinking. A great book that I'll have to return to after I read Deleuze and Guattari's "A Thousand Plateaus" I guess (so possibly never).

[emma]

Soft DNF @ 27%

Deboleena Roy has created something ambitious and really wonderful here in Molecular Feminisms, but I just don’t think that I have the right tools to really engage with it (yet).

I commend Roy for diving headfirst into her work, braiding together concepts that would be disparate at first glance but that do genuinely have a lot to gain from being put into conversation with one another. But my primary roadblock is something that Roy herself spends substantial time acknowledging: it’s really difficult to create a shared and mutually intelligible vocabulary that will satisfy biologists, feminist theorists, STS scholars, and philosophers, among others.

I just think that, despite the efforts to define terms and give background to an unfamiliar reader, it’s really difficult to grasp the complexities of this text without having a pretty firm foundation in philosophy, especially a familiarity with Deleuze. I want to make it clear that I do NOT think that this is a fault of the book, or an issue with Roy’s methodologies. As she herself admits, it’s difficult to be a scholar working at the confluence of historically separated fields, and there’s really no “right” way to write a text like this that will immediately feel accessible to its entire audience. To demand that every text provides the full spectrum of background work and foundational theory is ridiculous; how could we ever move forward if each venture has to start from the very beginning? But I did still spend a lot of the 60 pages of this that I read feeling a little bit like I was drowning in terminology that was completely new to me, and that was largely defined only using other terms that I also did not recognize.

I really agree with and want to revisit some of Roy’s big picture ideas here—I was particularly compelled by her notion of desire-based investigation and the reframing of working in a lab as working with nonhuman or inorganic beings rather than static subjects. I love science dearly, have dedicated my academic and professional (not to mention a healthy fraction of my personal) life to working in biological research, but I also struggle substantially with issues I take with dominant ethical framings of the research landscape. Texts like these are powerful for the way that they aim to navigate and instigate a better science and allow researchers and scholars to work on reframing their fields from within (as well as fall in love with their work all over again).

But I fear that the philosophical edge of things is still a little too slippery for me to grasp. Perhaps I’ll try again in a year or so 🤞

[elianna]

DNF at 50-ish percent because I had to return the book 😭 very good though! Roy has awesome insights and is building a fascinating framework through which to look at the world!