________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ CTHEORY THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE VOL 23, NO 1-2 Call for Papers 07/19/00 Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker _____________________________________________________________________ TECH FLESH ========== The Promise and Perils of the Human Genome Project ================================================== CTHEORY@Boston College ---------------------- Call for Papers, Event-Scenes, Art Projects ------------------------------------------- "Today we are learning the language in which God created life...With this profound new knowledge, humankind is on the verge of gaining immense new power to heal...Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind." - President Clinton "It would take you 100 years to read your own genetic code but I suspect you would fall asleep far earlier." - Craig Venter, CEO, Celera Genomics Beginning on-line in fall, 2000 and continuing with a spring, 2001 workshop/event at Boston College jointly sponsored by CTHEORY and the Department of Sociology, CTHEORY will examine the simultaneously ethical, social and ideological issues raised by the announcement of the successful conclusion of the first-phase of the Human Genome Project. Widely hyped as a "bible of life" and a "map" to the future of human evolution, the Human Genome Project throws into sharp ethical relief critical social issues raised by this newest phase in eugenic experimentation. Simultaneously speaking in terms of the language of facilitation (post-genetics as about the eradication of disease and the extension of the human life span) and in the language of control (genetic sequencing as the latest pharmaceutical version of the social hygiene movement), the Human Genome Project with its vision of pure genes and designer biology raises again not only the spectre of scientific hubris but also the silent political interests of a potential genetic superclass. Asking the question: the Human Genome Project: for whom and for what? as well as from whom and from what? This issue of CTHEORY will be devoted to a diversity of perspectives on the promise and perils of the Human Genome Project. Not something new, the Human Genome Project may continue a very ancient story: the struggle between two irreconcilable elements in human experience--the unwanted reality of the decay of the flesh, and the long-sought promised land of escape from the organic body to the pure technological body of post-biologics. Between the necessity of bodily corruption and exiting human flesh, that may be the utopia and futility of the Human Genome Project. Terminal Genome --------------- Hailed as nothing less than a "historic scientific achievement" and a "technological feat," the so-called "completion" of the map of the human genome - announced this summer in a public conference with U.S. President Clinton - is being compared to the moon landing and the splitting of the atom. The mainstream media, from TIME, to CNN, to the New York Times, have given widespread coverage to this event, highlighting the promises that the genome will lead to a new era of medicine, health care, and the government and corporate sponsored fight against disease. Biotech stocks are rising and falling with a dynamism rarely seen, except in the info-tech sector. As if the floodgates had opened, a whole new breed of gene-based disciplines has come forth as the answer to the problems of disease, mortality, even corporeality. These so-called "post-genomic" sciences, such as proteomics, pharmacogenomics, and bioinformatics, promise a future of "regenerative medicine," in which disease, disorder, and predisposition can be effectively coded out of the genome. Thus the overall effect from the announcement of the genome's completion is that the benefits of the genome are already here; as Jean Baudrillard might have put it, "the post-genomic era has already happened." Because this event has met with only minimal critical response thus far, CTHEORY proposes a heterogeneous grouping of interventionist responses, geared towards the more problematic assumptions and unrevealed desires embedded in the human genome project. Speed-theorists, net.artists, bio-activists, and biotech hobbyists, among many others, are invited to provide an alternative, more critical vision of the genome and its infotech-ideology. This is the tactic of cDNA as a distributed informatic critique. _____________________________________________________________________ CTHEORY'S cultural sequencing of the Human Genome Project will be edited by Arthur and Marilouise Kroker with Eugene Thacker (Rutgers University) and Stephen Pfohl (Boston College). In 2000-2001, CTHEORY will be edited from Boston College's Department of Sociology. _____________________________________________________________________ * CTHEORY is an international journal of theory, technology * and culture. Articles, interviews, and key book reviews * in contemporary discourse are published weekly as well as * theorisations of major "event-scenes" in the mediascape. * * Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker * * Editorial Board: Jean Baudrillard (Paris), Bruce Sterling (Austin), * R.U. Sirius (San Francisco), Siegfried Zielinski (Koeln), * Stelarc (Melbourne), Richard Kadrey (San Francisco), * Timothy Murray (Ithaca/Cornell), Lynn Hershman Leeson * (San Francisco), Stephen Pfohl (Boston), Andrew Ross * (New York), David Cook (Toronto), William Leiss (Kingston), * Shannon Bell (Downsview/York), Gad Horowitz (Toronto), * Sharon Grace (San Francisco), Robert Adrian X (Vienna), * Deena Weinstein (Chicago), Michael Weinstein (Chicago), * Andrew Wernick (Peterborough). * * In Memory: Kathy Acker * * Editorial Correspondents: Ken Hollings (UK), * Maurice Charland (Canada) Steve Gibson (Sweden). * * Editorial Assistant: Grayson Cooke * World Wide Web Editor: Carl Steadman ____________________________________________________________________ To view CTHEORY online please visit: http://www.ctheory.com/ To view CTHEORY MULTIMEDIA online please visit: http://ctheory.concordia.ca/ ____________________________________________________________________ * CTHEORY includes: * * 1. Electronic reviews of key books in contemporary theory. * * 2. Electronic articles on theory, technology and culture. * * 3. Event-scenes in politics, culture and the mediascape. * * 4. Interviews with significant theorists, artists, and writers. * * CTHEORY is sponsored by New World Perspectives and Concordia * University. * * No commercial use of CTHEORY articles without permission. * * Mailing address: CTHEORY, Concordia University, 1455 * de Maisonneuve, O., Montreal, Canada, H3G 1M8. * * Full text and microform versions are available from UMI, * Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Canadian Periodical Index/Gale * Canada, Toronto. * * Indexed in: International Political Science Abstracts/ * Documentation politique international; Sociological * Abstract Inc.; Advance Bibliography of Contents: Political * Science and Government; Canadian Periodical Index; * Film and Literature Index. _____________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 2000 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. more information: mail to: majordomo@rolux.org, subject line: , message body: info. further questions: mail to: rolux-owner@rolux.org. archive: http://www.rolux.org