Recombinant DNA and genome-editing technologies: Embodied utopias and heterotopias
- Recombinant DNA technology is an essential area of life engineering. The main aim of research in this field is to experimentally explore the possibilities of repairing damaged human DNA, healing or enhancing future human bodies. Based on ethnographic research in a Czech biochemical laboratory, the article explores biotechnological corporealities and their specific ontology through dealings with bio-objects, the bodywork of scientists. Using the complementary concepts of utopia and heterotopia, the text addresses the situation of bodies and bio-objects in a laboratory. Embodied utopias are analyzed as material semiotic phenomena that are embodied by scientists in their visions and emotions and that are related to potential bodies and to future, not-yet-actualized embodiments. As a counterpart to this, the text explores embodied heterotopias, which are always the other spaces, like biotechnological bio-objects that are simulated in computers or stored in special solutions.
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| Author: | Eva ŠlesingerováORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-819578 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X21998449 |
| ISSN: | 1460-3632 |
| Parent Title (English): | Body & society |
| Publisher: | SAGE Publ. |
| Place of publication: | Thousand Oaks [u.a.] |
| Document Type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Date of Publication (online): | 2021/07/15 |
| Date of first Publication: | 2021/07/15 |
| Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
| Release Date: | 2024/05/13 |
| Tag: | Michel Foucault; embodiment; genome editing; heterotopia; recombinant DNA; utopia |
| Volume: | 27 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Page Number: | 26 |
| First Page: | 32 |
| Last Page: | 57 |
| Note: | The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research on which this article is based was supported by the Marie-Curie Skłodowska project ARTENGINE, Artificial Life/Sociological and Anthropological Analysis of Life Engineering (granted within H2020, European Commission), realized at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The text was also supported by Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, Specific Research MUNI/A/1359/2019. |
| Institutes: | Gesellschaftswissenschaften |
| Dewey Decimal Classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 30 Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie / 300 Sozialwissenschaften |
| Sammlungen: | Universitätspublikationen |
| Licence (German): |  Creative Commons - CC BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |
