Fausto-Sterling - Sexing the Body

Notes 379
ties. Taylor, however, represents them as horizontal parallel lines crisscrossed
by vertical hen tracks. The hen tracks represent events such as regulation of
goat grazing or the use of terracing, which change the nature of the parallel
lines. An accurate picture of the current situation can be grasped only by
looking at all four lines and their interconnections (Taylor 1995, 1997, 1998,
and 1999).
91. Although he did not use the stacking-doll metaphor, many years ago
the embryologist Paul Weiss used a diagram of development that resembles a
cross section of a Russian doll. He included more of the organismal layers than
I do, but the idea is quite similar (Weiss 1959). Others have used more complex
diagrams to visualize human development. See, for example, Wapner
and Demick 1998,fig.13.1. They use Dewey and Bentley’s notion of transaction
to describe the ‘‘organism in environment’’ system, which they characterize
in terms of levels of integration. These range from activities within the
individual organism to what Wapner and Demick call the ‘‘person in the world
system’’ (p. 767).
92. Dewey and Bentley use the words extradermal and intradermal to communicate
this idea. They also are very wary of the idea of ‘‘the mind.’’ They
write: ‘‘The ‘mind’ as ‘actor,’ still in use in present-day psychologies and sociologies,
is the old self-acting ‘soul’ with its immortality stripped off,grown
dessicated and crotchety. ‘Mind’ or ‘mental’ as a preliminary word in casual
phrasing is a sound word to indicate a region or at least a general locality in
need of investigation; as such it is unobjectionable. ‘Mind,’ ‘faculty,’ ‘I.Q.’ or
what not as an actor in charge of behavior is a charlatan, and ‘brain’ as a substitute
for such a ‘mind’ is worse. Such words insert a name in place of a problem’’
(Dewey and Bentley 1949,pp.131–32). I use the idea of mind or psyche
as a placeholder for processes we can examine, but not as descriptions of a
mechanism.
93. Of course there are smaller units within the cells—organelles, molecules,
etc. But the cell is the last of the independently functioning unit systems.
A nucleus and its genes cannot create an organism outside a cell.
94. Harding 1995.
95. This is a paraphrase of ‘‘Primatology Is Politics by Other Means,’’ Haraway
1986,p.77.