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What do biologists study when they study "life" today?
Drawing on tools from rhetoric and poststructuralist theory, the author argues
that the ascent of molecular biology, with its emphasis on molecules such as DNA,
rather than organisms, was enabled by crucial rhetorical "softwares."
Metaphors such as the genetic "code" made possible a transformation
of the very concept of life, a transformation that often casts organisms as information
systems. With careful readings of key texts from the
history of molecular biology -- such as those of Erwin Schrodinger, Georges Gamow,
Jacques Monod, and François Jacob -- the author maps out the complex relations
between the practices of rhetoric and the technoscientific triumphs they accompanied,
triumphs that bolstered a "postvital" biology that increasingly elides
and questions the boundary between organisms and machines. There
have been many popular books, and a few academic ones, on the Human Genome Initiatives.
On Beyond Living is a genealogy of these initiatives, a map of how we have
come to equate human beings with "information." Melding contemporary
theory with scientific discourse, it is certain to provoke discussion (and controversy)
in the fields of cultural studies, theory, and science with its penetrating inquiries
into the relations between rhetoric and technoscience. Richard
Doyle is Assistant Professor of English at Penn State University. |
