Abstract
This chapter applies tenets of a critical curiosity to new technical practices. It questions the limits of a theoretical curiosity in the paradigms of technosciences of genomics and bioinformatics. These new research programs challenge modernist boundaries between human and non-human life-forms. Genomics tests the experimental limits of human embodiment. As a technical system it also brings into relief the question of the limits or limitlessness of theoretical curiosity in contemporary technoculture. This chapter contextualizes the question of limits to theoretical practice in a critique of a prevailing rhetoric of the “posthuman.” It provides a profile of the technical apparatus now being developed that extend the power of the human. The genomic paradigm is emphasized as a way of rewriting the codes of biological life. This chapter assays the genetic revolution within an anthropological appreciation of the salience of technics within human cultural organization and practice. The new genomic and bioinformatic models compel a shift away from public sector and democratic polities in favor of a technical sovereignty over life. I advance a critical, “zoographic” practice that addresses the extensions and changes in the relation of the body to the world and the nature of experience. It reviews germ-line and somatic cell developments in genetics and reproductive technologies affording class-marked bodies, health, and longevity. This chapter asserts that the technical or technics has always been the means by humans as tool users extend their physical, emotional, and intellectual capacities.
The man of the future will be filled with animals
—Rimbaud
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Pearson, K. A. (1997). Viroid life: Perspectives on Nietzsche and the transhuman condition. New York: Routledge.
Collins, F. (2010, September 6). In P. Boyer (Ed.), The covenant. The New Yorker.
Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology. Johns Hopkins Press.
Fukuyama, F. (2002). Our posthuman future. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
Halbertstram, J., & Livingston, I. (). Posthuman bodies. Indiana University Press.
Hayles, N. K. (1998). How we became posthuman, virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics. University of Chicago Press.
Jacob, F. (1973). The logic of life, a history of heredity. Princeton University Press.
Janicaud, D. (1994). Powers of the rational; science, technology and the future of thought. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Kay, L. (1993). The molecular vision of life: Caltech, the Rockefeller foundation, and the rise of the new biology. Oxford University Press.
Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1993). Gesture and speech. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). Eye and Mind. The primacy of perception (pp. 164-190). Bloomington, IN: Northwestern University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1997). The visible and the invisible. Bloomington, IN: Northwestern University Press.
Mitcham, C. (1994). Thinking through technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Nietzsche, F. (1967). The birth of tragedy. New York: Vintage.
Ostrow, S. (1997). In F. Kittler (Ed.), Literature, media, information systems (G+B Arts).
Pickering, A. (1995). The mangle of practice, time, agency and science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rabinow, P. (1996). Essays on thee anthropology of reason. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rhineberger, H.-J. (2010). An epistemology of the concrete, twentieth century histories of life. Duke University Press.
Steigler, B. (1998). Technics and time,1, the fault of Epimetheus. Stanford University Press.
Zuss, M. (2000). Genomics: Technics and writing the “posthuman”. Dialectical Anthropology 25; (2003). Zoography, Rhizomes: 7 Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledges,http://www.rhizomes.net.
Marx, K. (1992). Early writings. In L. Colettti (Ed.), pp. 345–358. New York: Penguin.
Zuss, M. (2003). Zoography. Rhizomes: 7. Cultural studies in emerging knowledges. Retrieved September 24, 2003, from http://www.rhizomes.net
Beardsworth, R. (1988). Thinking technicity. Cultural Value, 2(1), 70–86.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Zuss, M. (2012). Thinking Life. In: The Practice of Theoretical Curiosity. Explorations of Educational Purpose, vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2117-3_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2117-3_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-2116-6
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-2117-3
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawEducation (R0)