LIFESCIENCE: Re: LIFESCIENCE and body

[Eugene Thacker <maldoror@eden.rutgers.edu>]

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ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 99
LIFESCIENCE
Linz, Austria, September 04 - 09
http://www.aec.at/lifescience
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there are some interesting sides to the genetic determinist debate which
it would be good for us to spell out -

on the one hand there is the claim, mostly from bioethics working from a
liberal-humanist base, that the essence (or the "nature"?) of the human
in some way exceeds the discourse of molecular genetics (the notion that
"you will never be able to code the human soul or mind or passion...") -
the fear here seems twofold - both a fear of the political implications
of the human subject (as a biological species-being) being totalized
into a genetic semiotics, and the fear that the human would be no more
than a set of codes (albeit dynamic, emergent, and complex codes).

on the other hand much science studies has taken up the social
constructionist argument, attempting to always situate the discourses,
practices, and technologies within historical and social contexts - but
often w/ the disclaimer that this constructionism does not imply a
textual determinism, which would effectly map the (misreading of the)
notion of 'there is no outside of text' onto genetics.

what is interesting here is this need to posit an outside to some notion
of normativity - or rather this is exactly what is being negotiated
presently in debates over governmental regulations on cloning in the US
and Britain, for example. this posited outside is either an
essentialization of the human or a horizon which serves to construct the
knowable -

strangely enough, i don't actually see corporate biotech suggesting that
genetics can or will account for the whole human being - not explicitly
at least. rather, the thread running from funding to research to
clinical trials to medicine begins by working on a somatic level - by
starting w/ the (biological) body as an index to the subject....

?

eugene


> Against the myth created by the industrial complex of life sciences,
> mankind
> is still not at the point to be totally entangled in the structure of
> his genes
> that tell the whole story  about every individual. Genes as the
> microstructure
> of the body are embedded in a social context consisting for example of
> social
> relations or nutritition factors which influence the human
> genome system.

-- 
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