Re: [-empyre-] Poetics of DNA II

[Nicholas Ruiz III <editor@intertheory.org>]

To speak of sex, gender, romance and seduction in this
context makes one think of Baudrillard:

"Une femme peut avoir toute l'évidence d'une femme, et
ne pas l'être.  Le sexe même n'y suffit pas--il faut
de la féminité pour faire une femme..."

Cool Memories V (2000-2004)
p.48


Nick


--- Judith Roof <roof12@comcast.net> wrote:

> Just some quick thoughts--
> 
> Eugene's insights (curmudgeonly or not) point to the
> gooey insistence  
> of some essentialized difference between science and
> humanism--and as  
> well to the the stubborn stickiness of the binary
> which sneaks its  
> paradigms back in whether we like it or not.
> 
> The flat code could also be the very round code or
> the donut code of  
> the Klein bottle code.
> 
> DNA is always and never what we make it--as John
> suggested the  
> chemical is also a screen  and point of focus
> occulting yet other  
> processes and sites already envisioned as
> simultaneously scalar and  
> inaccessible, repeating infinitely down the line.
> 
> Eugene is right--I am not accusing the "hard"
> sciences of being  
> reductionist.  I am suggesting that popularizations
> and science PR  
> are symptoms of broad contemporary epistemologies
> that, though not  
> shared by "experts," nonetheless hold large sway and
> sneak in now and  
> then to processes of conceptualization.  Note, for
> example, a  
> continued unwillingness to separate sex and gender,
> or at least  
> seriously consider why these are useful "categories"
> and the ways  
> they both work and don't work in tandem.
> 
> I like the notion of a "biochemical
> Lebensphilosophie," and rue the  
> fact that romanticizing complexity is its seduction.
> But as Jim  
> suggested, gaps in education keep us at a
> Fischer-Price status quo.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Judith
> 
> On Oct 4, 2007, at 7:09 PM, Eugene Thacker wrote:
> 
> > Hi all...
> >
> > Judith's opening remarks propose an intriguing
> reversal:
> >
> > "If language and metaphor condition our
> understandings of DNA, then  
> > our
> > imaginary of DNA has started to condition our
> considerations of  
> > language and
> > metaphor.?
> >
> > I like this because, first, it questions the
> assumptions that ?we? as
> > humanities-based STS scholars might take when
> looking at the  
> > construction of
> > technoscientific artifacts. Not that I profess
> faith in the  
> > unqualified thing-
> > in-itself, however. But if metaphor and
> materiality are always  
> > intertwined, then
> > it would make sense to consider how DNA ? which,
> we should  
> > remember, is a
> > compounded entity that is at once biological and
> informatic, wet  
> > and dry ? is
> > not simply an example or a subset of metaphor, but
> itself a  
> > correlation of thing
> > and idea, the gooey ?stuff? of life and all of its
> heightened  
> > significations.
> >
> > That something like DNA is at once posited as
> such, and yet remains  
> > in some
> > sense hermeneutically inaccessible (e.g. in terms
> of what the book- 
> > of-life or
> > the code ?means? etc.), then doesn?t this imply
> that DNA, that most  
> > loquacious
> > of molecules, is actually quite inert, mute, and
> silent?
> >
> > What would a ?negative theology? of DNA be like?
> Neoplatonic and  
> > early Medieval
> > thinkers often asserted a negative notion of the
> supernatural or  
> > the divine ?
> > that one could not state positively what the
> divine was (God or  
> > Being is X or Y)
> > but could only signify that which was beyond
> signification by a  
> > process of
> > negation (God or Being is not-A or not-B, if A and
> B stand for  
> > attributes such
> > as ?corporeal? or ?temporal?).
> >
> > How about this ? negative DNA as something like a
> ?flat code? ?  
> > that is a code
> > that at once asserts its own informational
> verbosity and yet at the  
> > same time
> > withdraws into the arcana of ?complexity? and the
> avalanche of  
> > numbers (e.g.
> > genomics as a data management problem).
> >
> > -Eugene
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------
> > Eugene Thacker, Associate Professor
> > School of Literature, Communication & Culture
> > Georgia Institute of Technology
> >
> > eugene.thacker@lcc.gatech.edu
> > http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~ethacker
> > ----------------------------------------------
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > empyre forum
> > empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 
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