[-empyre-] Poetics of DNA II

["books@krokodile.co.uk" <books@krokodile.co.uk>]

Judith/all

I  haven't read the relevant text yet so you'll have to forgive the 
misunderstandings and misreadings below but a some initial pointers 
might help me understand the core of the agument whilst the title arrives.

It would be useful to understand why you identify DNA and genes as 
nonarbitrary and fixed - rather than as being evidence of living beings 
as being genetically wide-range-determinism. There is a sense that 
Science/DNA/genetics because it is some form of determinism, has 
inhabited our social imaginary and led to a turn away from 
representational complexity.  What then is determinism ?  To clarify why 
I ask this question and hopefully in clear and simple terms: my eyes 
being blue are genetically determined, speech, sight, hearing and so on 
however its also clear that the majority of catagories are not 
genetically determined and are  rather social determinations for example 
sexual difference, gender, intelligence.

Further could you clarify how you justify the initial sentences that 
begin: "Although a notion of the..." and especially what evidence and 
argument would you produce to support the implication around "the 
delusive truth of the empirical".  The final sentence of this first 
paragraph appears to make the proposition that 'DNA' is a paradigmatic 
technology - and here is the cause of my doubt - I am getting rather old 
and this is at least the third or fourth technology and or scientific 
theory that has been proposed as such.

Could you also perhaps clarify what you understand by the term 'science' 
important from my perspective because of the way Nick in his 
introductory mail collapsed everything into the term 'code'.

Finally the 'bright young thing' and the death of film theory, someone 
who neither understands  film theory  nor  science is not 'bright'

steve/pl