CorporealSemiotics:TheBodyoftheText/theTextoftheBody 345
the next generation (Collins et al. 835-47; Gibney and Nolan 4-13;
Myersx).
Increasingly, however the models of the "informational body of
DNA" (Ahuja xiv) are attaining a determinist aura, as if they already
limnoutthefuturestateofhumanlifeinthepresent.Inthisnewversion
of personhood, the biological interior—one is tempted to speak of
infrastructurehere—isnotjustlinkedtosocialandculturalidentity;itis
perceived as being its source and determining factor. Troy Duster,
director of the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge
atNewYorkUniversity,somewhileagonoticed"a'drift'towardgreater
receptivity to genetic explanation for an increasing variety of human
behavior" (119), including alcoholism, criminal activities, and
sometimesevenhomosexuality.Theascendanceofepigeneticsasanew
and highly privileged explanatory matrix for individual and collective
behavior is all the more remarkable if it is viewed against the
backgroundofdeeplyentrenchedhistoriclinksbetweenraceandcrime^32
or race, class, and non-normative sexual behavior—links which had
already been highlighted by a cutting-edge biomedical science of an
earlierday,thegermtheoryofdisease(discussedaboveinthesectionon
"Biological Encounters"). From an American Cultural Studies
perspective, I would insist on an even earlier precedent and read
epigenetics as a latter-day rehearsal of the Puritan economy of signs.
Just as the Puritans believed in "the outward and visible sign of inward
election"(TheBookofCommonPrayerqtd.inJameson,Postmodernism
328), so do their latter-day successors in the epigenetic prediction
department believe in its conceptual opposite, in outward signs of inner
depravity,basedongenomicendowment.Onemightcharacterizethisas
aconceptualandmoralmovefromDoingGoodtoBeingGood.
Meanwhile,the"drift"identifiedbyDusterhascontinuedunabatedly
and come to also include the contingencies of embodiment so that
(^32) Richard Cooper et al. make a similar point: "The correlation between the use
ofunsupportedgeneticinferencesandthesocialstandingofagroupisaglaring
evidence of bias.... Not only are the relevant genetic data absent, but the
distributionofpolygenicphenotypesdoesnotsuggestraceisausefulcategory"
(1166). Cf. also Duster, Troy. "Ancestry Testing and DNA: Uses, Limits—And
Caveat Emptor."Council for Responsible Genetics.CRG, 2017. Web. 17 June
2017.