CorporealSemiotics:TheBodyoftheText/theTextoftheBody 327
From the standpoint of cultural critique, genetics compels us to
rethink the relations between inside and outside of the body. Western
cultures had long taken their departure from conceptualizations of the
bodilyinteriorasthesoulorcoreoflife,andthevariousconstructivisms
emerging in the wake of deconstruction and poststructuralism have by
and large regarded the biology of human beings as only contingently or
ideologically linked to their outside, their social or cultural identities.
Now, with the advent of genetics and the possibility of interventions
even into the building blocks of human life,^4 the balance of power in
interpretation concerning what human life is seems to be shifting to the
sciences, and the biological interior is increasingly perceived—perhaps
just as ideologically—as a determining factor, not only for more
narrowly biological but also for broader political, social, and cultural
issues.Accordingly,Iwillinthischaptertracehowthegene,genomics,
and the bio-technological industrial complex together have come to
pervade the cultural consciousness of the United States and many other
countriesacrosstheworld.
The pages that follow are an attempt to address some of the
challenges arising from the new physico-technical ways of being and
knowing. In the past, the biology of human life has often been made
meaningfulbyresortingtoanideologyofrace;today,inthetimesofthe
genomicrevolutions,itisunderwrittenbyconceptsofrisk—whichmay
bejustasideological.Astheoldquestionofwhatbodiesmaysignifyis
asked again, but in new and, some people say, disturbing ways,
corporeal semiotics and semantics may take on new forms. Before
addressing these in a chapter on the new meaning-endowment of the
DNA segments, in the chromosomes of an organism" ("Genomics,"The
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Languagen. pag.; cf.The Free
Dictionary).
MolecularBiologyisthe"studyofphenomenaintermsofbiologymolecular(or
chemical) interactions; traditionally, the focus of molecular biology is more
specific than biochemistry in that it has an emphasis on chemical interactions
involved in the replication of DNA, its 'transcription' into RNA, and its
'translation' into or expression in protein, that is, in the chemical reactions
connectinggenotypeandphenotype"("MolecularBiology"n.pag.).
(^4) Siddharta Mukherjee's new bookThe Gene: An Intimate History(2016) was
publishedtoolateforadetaileddiscussioninthisvolume.