Description
Book SynopsisShortlisted for the 2021 BSLS Book Prize Genomic technologies have had a profound impact on understandings of what it means to be human and our links to the world we inhabit, and on practices of inhabiting the world. This open access book considers this impact across a range of literary forms, cultural practices, and political imaginaries, and argues that new descriptions of biological value introduced through practices of genomic sequencing from the late 1970s registered a broader crisis of narrative form. Examining a wide range of texts by Doris Lessing, Samuel Delany, Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, Kir Bulychev, Kazuo Ishiguro, Saidiya Hartman, Yaa Gyasi, Svetlana Alexievich, and Jeff VanderMeer,
Narrative in the Age of the Genome casts new light on the intersections of genomics with politics of racism, sexuality, labour and gender, neoliberal economics and environmental crisis.
The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence o
Trade Review
Imbued throughout with deep concern for the peripheral, the possible, and the political … What emerges as most compelling out of this entire tapestry of readings is the author's interpretation of the limits and failures of the extraordinary ‘cultural power of the genome.' * Science *
Intellectually rich and rewarding, this study ranges effortlessly across the fields of biology, socio-economic theory and philosophy, drawing on these perspectives to forge novel readings of a range of literary texts. Imaginative and astute in its reflections on genre and narrative form, it is beautifully written throughout. The argument is bold and original, grounded in rigorous research and always attentive to the specific biosocial contexts it explores. * Professor Clare Hanson, University of Southampton, UK *
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: Deindustrialisation and the Selfish Gene Gene and Strike Overpopulation and Whiteness: Doris Lessing’s The Memoirs of a Survivor Brackets and Choice: Samuel Delany’s Trouble on Triton Chapter 2: Cultivating Dreamworlds Mutual Aid Cultivating Humans The Fifth Problem: Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic Genogeography: Kir Bulychev’s “Another’s Memory” Chapter 3: Memoir and the Laboratory Metaphors of the Human Genome Project Welfare, Profit, and the Vitruvian Man Ending Development: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go Algorithmic Governmentality in Andrew Niccols’s Gattaca Chapter 4: Speculative Ancestry Ancestry Making Genre, Genetics, and Genealogy Henrietta Lacks and Stolen Flesh Reparation, Romance, and Kinlessness Leaving: Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother Staying: Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing Chapter 5: Toxic Infrastructure Chernobyl and the Postgenomic Condition Adaptation, Improvisation, and Epigenetics Mutation and Fragmentation: Svetlana Alexievich’s Chernobyl Prayer Transitional Characterisation: Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy Conclusion: Disappearance, community, characterisation, genre, and scale Works Cited Index
