Angela Balzano, Elisa Bosisio e Ilaria Santoemma (eds.), Conchiglie, Pinguini, Staminali: Verso Futuri Transpecie, DeriveApprodi, 2022
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17586
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Gioacchino Orsenigo
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Angela Balzano, Elisa Bosisio and Ilaria Santoemma (eds.), Shells, Penguins, Stem Cells: Toward Trans-species Futures, DeriveApprodi, 2022
Text.Serial.Journal
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Book Reviews
2023-02-19
2023-06-30
2023-02-19
2023-10-30
160-164
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Gioacchino Orsenigo
2022
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17586
160
University of Naples L’Orientale
2038-3460
2
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164
Angela Balzano, Elisa Bosisio and Ilaria Santoemma (eds.), Shells, Penguins, Stem Cells: Toward Trans-species Futures, DeriveApprodi, 2022
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160                                                                  Tecnoscienza – 13 (2)


                                         ***
   Angela Balzano, Elisa Bosisio, Ilaria Santoemma (eds.)
Conchiglie, Pinguini, Staminali: Verso Futuri Transpecie [Shells, Penguins,
Stem Cells: Toward Trans-species Futures], Roma, DeriveApprodi, 2022,
pp. 288

Gioacchino Orsenigo University of Naples L’Orientale

    Conchiglie, Pinguini, Staminali is a collection of essays, previously pub-
lished in English, by some of the most influential and creative feminist
thinkers (Stacy Alaimo, Melinda Cooper, Beth Dempster, Sarah Franklin,
Donna Haraway, Luciana Parisi, María Puig de la Bellacasa, Zoe Sofia,
Noël Sturgeon). By translating their works into Italian, this book fills, at
least in part, the lack of attention on the feminist ecological perspective
within the Italian scholarly and editorial world. As the editors’ state in their
Introduction Com/pensare la cura transpecie [Thinking(with) trans-species
care], the collection aims to:

      bring in Italian contributions of many scholars and activists who urge us
      not to untie science and technology studies from the critical perspectives
      offered by eco/cyborg/transfeminisms. (p. 5, my translation)

    The rich introduction is signed by the editors Angela Balzano (author
of Per Farla Finita con la Famiglia, 2021), Elisa Bosisio and Ilaria San-
toemma – three prominent Italian feminist thinkers – and offers a very
dense (and sometimes even slightly obstructive for those unfamiliar with a
certain language) path within feminist new materialist literature. A clear
political intent justifies the choice of each contribution, which overall is meant
as a toolbox fundamental to the production of critical thought and practice:

      it is then a matter of training, that is, of continuing to sharpen with passion
      and dedication our thinking abilities, always rooted in bodies and matter, to
      make them better. (p. 30, my translation, italics in the original).

    The book is divided into two parts. The first brings together contribu-
tions to “thinking technoscience beyond autopoietic reproduction” (p. 5,
my translation) by drawing from works of feminist authors who have re-
flected on the productive system (i.e., the market) as always a (re)produc-
tive system. In these essays, the theme of reproduction, in its connection
with new biotechnology, is analyzed through a feminist perspective and the
link between new anti-feminist fundamentalism in defense of “life”, heter-
onormative reproduction and “ecocidal” devastation is central. The second
part of the book explores “trans-species futures” to “take care of past and
Book Review                                                                        161

present” (p. 5, my translation). It presents a series of contributions to im-
agine alternative futures, aware of the interrelationship between past, pre-
sent and future. The feminist standpoint of the authors allows them to re-
fuse both techno-optimism and technophobia, both transhumanist enthu-
siasm and humanist catastrophism. Instead, the editors describe them-
selves as situated “biohackers” (p. 10), committed to imagining alternative,
trans-species and anti-patriarchal forms of kinship and new technonatural-
semiotic hybrid assemblages, in full Harawayan style.
    Melinda Cooper’s first essay, Stagnazione secolare: La paura di un futuro
non-riproduttivo [original title: Secular Stagnation: Fear of a non-reproduc-
tive future] reflects on the eternal return of secular stagnation theories that
would explain crises of economic stagnation in relation to demographic
trends. Cooper points out that at the heart of that theory is an “equation
between the nonreproductive logic of finance capital and the nonrepro-
ductive (or excessive or insufficient) desire of the surplus population” (p.
61, my translation). The author dwells on it to denounce the return of re-
productive nationalism and the obligation to heterosexual reproduction as
a tool that conceals the asymmetries of capitalism.
    Older than any of the others, but no less relevant, Zoe Sofia’s essay Feti
sterminatori [original title: Exterminating Fetuses: Abortion, disarmament,
and the sexo-semiotics of extraterrestrialism] (published in 1984) enacts
what the author calls a “sexo-semiotics of technology” (p. 64, original ver-
sion). Sofia discusses the debate about abortion and the obsessive and du-
alistic focus on the fetus by both pro-life and pro-choice parties, which
always excludes the situated relation between fetus and women bodies. She
reflects on the abstractness of this rhetoric of the unborn also in connection
to 2001: A Space Odyssey, as:

    aspects of an ideological apparatus which addresses extinction fears only to
    distract us from the exterminating practices of the military-industrial com-
    plex. (p. 63, my translation)

    Reflections on military technologies and abortion are woven into a
broader discourse on technologies (which the author believes as always
(re)productive), and on the temporality of capitalist progress as well as on
the possibility of opening up spaces of real care for the existing.
    L’impatto biotecnologico [original title: The Bio-technological impact
and Abstract Sex] is a translation of the second and third paragraphs of the
first chapter of Luciana Parisi’s book Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technol-
ogy, and the Mutations of Desire (2004). The essay, in dialogue with Donna
Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto (1991), reflects upon the impact of new
bio/info-technologies on sexual reproduction and strongly criticizes any
attempt to naturalize bodies and reproduction. New technologies allow us
to think about bodies not in relation to their functions but rather to their
transformative possibilities. The concept of abstract sex places the body in
162                                                           Tecnoscienza – 13 (2)


relation to the Deleuzian and Guattarian concept of the abstract machine,
as a layering and continuous variation of biophysical, biocultural, and bio-
digital elements. As the abstract machine, Abstract Sex implies the priority
of the virtual on the actual organization of matter (body): the body is always
more than its normative biological description and matter has an “unpre-
dictable transformative potential” (p. 91, my translation).
    Beth Dempster’s essay I sistemi simpoietici e i sistemi autopietici [origi-
nal title: Sympoietic and autopoietic systems: A new distinction for self-or-
ganizing systems] acts as the glue between the first and second part of the
collection. The author discusses the concept of system and, in particular,
criticizes Maturana and Varela’s autopoietic conception of living systems.
Opposed to it is the idea of sympoiesis, which emphasizes the openness of
living systems, characterized by dynamic and complex relationality.
    Parentele future [Future Kinship. Original title: After IVF] by Sarah
Franklin is again a translation of the eighth chapter of the book Biological
relatives, IVF, Stem Cells and the Future of Kinship (2013). The author re-
flects on IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) to think about new forms of kinship.
IVF reveals that technological development does not have a linear path
only aimed at satisfying predetermined goals but is always a harbinger of
hidden possibilities that can change the goals and transform the subjectiv-
ities involved. Moreover, according to the author, it undermines the “im-
aginary biological naturalism” (p. 139, my translation) and shows that bi-
ology itself is not fixed but changes through technology that, in turn, be-
comes more and more biological along the process. Biological reproduction
is no longer the only form of reproduction, and this offers unprecedented
scenarios for thinking about alternative forms of kinship and parenting.
    The sixth chapter, Fabulazioni speculative per le generazioni della
tecnocultura [original title: Speculative fabulations for technoculture’s gener-
ations: Taking care of unexpected country], is a translation of a paper by
Donna Haraway on the works of Patricia Piccinini within the catalog of a
2007 exhibition of hers. Piccinini’s works show odd creatures as the result
of genetic engineering and cloning. Through them, Haraway reflects on the
role of science and technology in the context of the ecological crisis. To the
Western technoscience that always destroys the past to replace it with
something new (following the mantra of creative destruction), she opposes
a technoculture of hybridization that creates new forms of queer care and
kinship. Haraway imagines trans-species futures emphasizing the critical
role of biotechnology for an ecology aimed not at “restoring” Nature but
to unexpected generations.
    Valori Familiari fra i Pinguini [original title: Penguin Family Values: The
nature of planetary environmental reproductive justice. Second chapter of
the book Environmentalism in popular culture: Gender, race, sexuality and
the politics of the natural, 2008] by Noël Sturgeon brings together reflec-
Book Review                                                                  163

tions on sexuality and reproduction and ecological crisis and the Anthro-
pocene. The author shows how penguins have often been taken as a symbol
of climate change but also chosen as an emblem of the heterosexual and
familist norm by neo-fundamentalists or even as a symbol of gay parenting
by the homosexual community. The author criticizes the anthropomor-
phization underlying these approaches and the use of a naturalized nature
as a tool to establish the boundaries of the acceptable and the unaccepta-
ble. Overcoming a naturalized, familistic and heteronormative conception
of reproduction is identified as a crucial step for the collective survival of
humans and non-humans.
    Stacy Alaimo reflects on the limits of the Anthropocene concept in the
essay Conchiglie in Acido [Shells on Acid. Original title: Your Shell on Acid:
Material immersion, Anthropocene dissolves. Sixth chapter of the book Ex-
posed: Environmental politics and pleasures in posthuman times, 2016]. The
author engages with some important authors, particularly Dipesh
Chakrabarty. By discussing some of his limits, she exposes the potential of
a neo-materialist and feminist approach to the ecological question, not
avoiding confronting some important critiques. With an overturning of
gaze, Alaimo invites us to look at the Earth not from outer space but from the
depths of the seas: shells, which due to the acidification of the oceans tend to
pulverize, become a warning to think about transcorporeality. Alaimo criti-
cizes the idea that the world is “constituted mainly by entities extrinsic to the
self, objects intended for human consumption” (p. 238, my translation).
    Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s essay, Pensare con (la) Cura [original title:
Thinking with Care. Second chapter of the book Matters of care: Speculative
ethics in more than human worlds, 2017], concludes the collection. The au-
thor takes up some of Donna Haraway’s fundamental concepts to reflect
on a relational form of thinking practice and on thinking-with as a form of
situated care. Thinking-with means finding forms of mutual accountability
and transforming thinking into an ethical-political practice that opposes
the transcendent ideal of an “objective” knowledge as a gaze from nowhere
in favor of a theory of standpoint and situated knowledges.
    The book overall is a complex assemblage. The themes of the
body/technology, culture/nature relationships are certainly central to all
the essays, but each contribution offers a particular perspective and, more
importantly, renounces and indeed dismantles the universalistic and ab-
stract claim of an alleged scientific methodology. Instead, a situated (Har-
away 1991) and partisan standpoint is privileged by the authors. Moreover,
the order in which the essays are arranged is not by chance but rather built
to create a second narrative exceeding the content of every single essay.
The editors’ introduction helps to grasp this unity: (re)production is undoubt-
edly at the heart of the collection, reproduction being understood here in a
broad sense, in relation to non-human critters and the survival of the planet.
164                                                                Tecnoscienza – 13 (2)


    The collection finally translates into Italian some sorely missed corner-
stones of contemporary feminist thought. These are authors of the highest
caliber, and each essay is very dense and thought-provoking. The assem-
blage work of the editors really succeeds in conveying the ways of an alter-
native and situated knowledge and a practice of thinking-with the authors
and beyond. As a whole, as much as in the single essays, the political and
ethical urgency animating the book and so well described in the introduc-
tion, emerges. The editors’ intent to provide conceptual tools in order to
stay with the trouble (Haraway 2016) is undoubtedly successful, although
at times, precisely because of the richness and density of the contributions,
one runs the risk of losing the nexus that holds together these different
essays. In any case, Conchiglie, Pinguini, Staminali is an essential collection
for anyone interested in STS from a feminist and ecological perspective.

References
Alaimo, S. (2016) Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman
       Times, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
Balzano, A. (2021) Per farla finita con la famiglia: Dall’aborto alle parentele postu-
       mane, Milano, Meltemi.
Franklin, S. (2013) Biological relatives, IVF, Stem Cells and the Future of Kinship,
       Durham, Duke University Press.
Haraway, D. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New
      York, Routledge.
Haraway, D. (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene,
      Durham, Duke University Press.
Parisi, L. (2004) Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology, and the Mutations of De-
         sire, London, Continuum.
Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017) Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than
       Human Worlds, Minneapolis and London, University of Minnesota Press.
Sturgeon, N. (2008) Environmentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality
       and the Politics of the Natural, Tucson, Arizona University Press.

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