A Foucaultian reading of genetic science : archaeologizing the science of the gene

Abstract

In recent decades the problems posed by modern genetics has increasingly become a subject of debate within the social sciences. Those debates lead us to ask whether genetics is strictly a scientific endeavor. That begs a further question which forms the focus of this study: What else is modern genetics besides being a scientific concern? The aim of the thesis, therefore, is to begin to ask what genetic science really is. In order to achieve that goal the thesis seeks to examine gene technology through Foucaultian eyes. With that in mind Chapter I sketches an interpretation of Michel Foucault’s theoretical position. On the basis of that chapter, it can be argued that he conceives of power as the painstaking control of the life conditions of the body. Such a conceptualization of power interprets the government of the body both in terms of the tactics of domination and in terms of the techniques of the self. Chapter 2, by showing the way in which he applied this conceptualization to historical experiences provides us ii with an intriguing perspective through which to consider what modern genetics is. That archaeological approach conceives the constitution of new modalities of power in terms of dislocations and discursive transformations. Chapter 3 seeks to apply that interpretation of Foucault to modern genetics. As a result of such a reading, it is argued that modern genetics is not only a scientific concern, but also a new technique of the self (ethopolitics) and a new tactic of domination (molecular politics.)