Description
Book SynopsisClones, Fakes and Posthumans: Cultures of Replication explores cloning and related phenomena that inform each other, like twins, fakes, replica, or homogeneities, through a cultural prism. What could it mean to think of a cloning mentality? Could it be that a “cloning culture” has made biotechnological cloning desirable in the first place, and vice versa that biotechnological cloning then enforces technologies of social and cultural cloning? What does it mean to say that a culture replicates? If biotechnological cloning has to do with choice and repetitive reproduction of selected characteristics, how are those kinds of desires expressed socially, politically and culturally? Lifting the issue of cloning above the biotechnological domain, we problematize the cultural context, including modernity’s readiness to imitate and manipulate nature, and the skewed privileging of desirable socialities as a basis for exclusive replication. We also explore possible relations between a cloning mentality and a consumer society that fosters a brand-name mentality. The construction and (coercive) implementation of copy-prone technological and symbolic items are at the very heart of the consumer society and its modes of mass production as they have emerged from and seek to articulate, define, and refine modernity and modernization.
Table of ContentsPhilomena Essed and Gabriele Schwab: Introduction: Cloning and Cultures of Replication Technologies, Fantasies and Philosophies of Life Verena Stolcke: Homo Clonicus Heleen van den Hombergh: Gentech Agriculture Rosi Braidotti: Transposing Life Gabriele Schwab: Replacement Humans Cultural Cloning Philomena Essed and David Theo Goldberg: Cloning, Cultures, and the Social Injustices of Homogeneities Ross D. Parke, Christine Ward Gailey, Scott Coltrane, and M. Robin DiMatteo: The Pursuit of Perfection Philomena Essed: Cloning the Physician Ackbar Abbas: Cloning Disappearance, Consuming Fakes Replicating and Marketing Faith Eileen Luhr: Marketing Religion Rebecca Kugel: Civilizing Missions Toby Miller: The Yanqui Makeover The Cloning Imaginary: Proliferations of a Fantasy Gabriele Schwab: Twin Enemies Carole-Anne Tyler: Dead Ringer – Knock Off Nancy Postero: Destiny – Eternity The Contributors
