Helga Nowotny and Giuseppe Testa
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780262014939
- eISBN:
- 9780262295802
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262014939.003.0001
- Subject:
- Biology, Evolutionary Biology / Genetics
This chapter explores visibility as the defining feature enabled by the molecular gaze on life. Not only life is being recast through an ever expanding range of components (from genes to cells to ...
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This chapter explores visibility as the defining feature enabled by the molecular gaze on life. Not only life is being recast through an ever expanding range of components (from genes to cells to omic profiles etc.); but these bits of living matter, once extracted from their original contexts, acquire an essential status precisely through their newly found visibility. Along with the unprecedented capacity that now enables interventions into living processes, this visibility of life’s mechanistic underpinnings shapes public discourse, conjuring the proximity of radical frontiers and sharp ruptures form existing societal arrangements. By focusing on the paradigmatic example of assisted reproduction, we show how many developments, within and around the molecular life sciences, stand instead in remarkable continuity with foundational traits of our culture.Less
This chapter explores visibility as the defining feature enabled by the molecular gaze on life. Not only life is being recast through an ever expanding range of components (from genes to cells to omic profiles etc.); but these bits of living matter, once extracted from their original contexts, acquire an essential status precisely through their newly found visibility. Along with the unprecedented capacity that now enables interventions into living processes, this visibility of life’s mechanistic underpinnings shapes public discourse, conjuring the proximity of radical frontiers and sharp ruptures form existing societal arrangements. By focusing on the paradigmatic example of assisted reproduction, we show how many developments, within and around the molecular life sciences, stand instead in remarkable continuity with foundational traits of our culture.
