Nature - autonomous learning

148 de-naturalisationconcepts (like sex and sexuality) are integral to the discourses he analysed.In particular, Foucault showed that in many societal discourses the naturaland the normal are equated, as are the ‘unnatural’ and the ‘abnormal’. Forinstance, as noted above, if a heterosexual identity and associated sexualpractices are seen as ‘normal’ in a society, then a person who is homosexualmay well feel the need to conceal both their sexual preferences and theirsexual behaviour.The geographical link here is that all dominant discoursesare reproduced in and through myriad physical sites that are arranged insuch a way as to reinforce (or challenge) these discourses. For instance,the British ‘queer geographer’ Gill Valentine (1996) has examined theheterosexual coding of public space and the effects of this on the time–spacebehaviour of homosexuals. Sexuality aside, other geographers, suchas Chris Philo of Glasgow University, (Philo 2001) have used Foucault’sideas to explore the geographical constitution of discourses of sanity andinsanity – where, once again, notions of nature are in play (since insanityis often thought to be a congenital illness residing in an individual’s head– a case of ‘mental functioning gone wrong’).Foucault is not the only major thinker to have inspired human geographersin their de-naturalisation of mind and body. Others include JudithButler, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan and Pierre Bourdieu (see Lechte 1994and Edgar and Sedgwick 2002 for pithy introductions to these thinkers’work). For instance, the British cultural geographer Steve Pile (1996) hasused insights drawn from psychoanalytic theory to explore how differentidentities are fashioned in urban environments. Using Foucault and othertheorists of identity and corporeality, critical human geographers havede-naturalised gender, ‘race’ and sexuality in particular. I’ve focused onFoucault because he brings identity and the body within one analyticalframework and also because discourse is so central to his thinking. Itshould also be noted that, unlike Derrida, Foucault’s work evinces a highlymaterialistic understanding of discourse. Because discourses ‘reach in’to the mind and body they have a palpable physicality. In this sense, theresearch of Foucault and those inspired by him shades into the materialconstructionism dealt with in the section ‘Remaking nature’ below. 4Hyperreality and virtual naturesThe fourth, and final, approach to discourses of nature that I want to focuson is partly inspired by a contemporary of Derrida and Foucault. Jean