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In the age of global biotechnology, DNA
can exist as biological material in a test tube, as a sequence
in a computer database, and as economically valuable information
in a patent. In The Global Genome, Eugene Thacker
asks us to consider the relationship of these three entities
and argues that -- by their existence and their interrelationships
-- they are fundamentally redefining the notion of biological
"life itself."
Biological science and the biotech industry
are increasingly organized at a global level, in large part
because of the use of the Internet in exchanging biological
data. International genome sequencing efforts, genomic databases,
the development of World Intellectual Property policies,
and the "borderless" business of biotech are all
evidence of the global intersections of biology and informatics
-- of genetic codes and computer codes. Thacker points out
the internal tension in the very concept of biotechnology:
the products are more "tech" than "bio,"
but the technology itself is fully biological, composed
of the biomaterial labor of genes, proteins, cells, and
tissues. Is biotechnology a technology at all, he asks,
or is it a notion of "life itself" that is inseparable
from its use in the biotech industry?
The three sections of the book cover the
three primary activities of biotechnology today: the encoding
of biological materials into digital form -- as in bioinformatics
and genomics; its recoding in various ways -- including
the "biocolonialism" of mapping genetically isolated
ethnic populations and the newly pervasive concern over
"biological security"; and its decoding back into
biological materiality -- as in tissue engineering and regenerative
medicine. Thacker moves easily from science to philosophy
to political economics, enlivening his account with ideas
from such thinkers as Georges Bataille, Georges Canguilhem,
Michel Foucault, Antonio Negri, and Paul Virilio. The "global
genome," says Thacker, makes it impossible to consider
biotechnology without the context of globalism.
Eugene Thacker is Assistant Professor
in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture
at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
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