One can never think of DNA in quite the same way after reading Judith Roof’s book, The Poetics of DNA. Here are a few morsels for your consideration:
. . . DNA is not simply a chemical active in biochemical processes. It stands at the tip of an iceberg of beliefs, ideas, and concepts about how life and science work, what we can do with what we know, and the forms knowledge can take.
. . . it [DNA] has become a symbolic repository of epistemological, ideological and conceptual change.
The evolution of DNA-based genetic science accompanied the development of digital computers and theories of cybernetics, and the emergence of the contemporary category of the postmodern. The correlation of thought and molecule suggests that the history of DNA has been a saga of things falling into place.
DNA’s analogies encourage a hyperbolic sense of agency and control as well as a host of Western ideologies about identity, gender and difference.
The paradox — that representations of science render scientific facts less “true” (or more culturally relative) while the figures of their representation become scientifically operative — is a paradox only within the larger realm of cultural dynamics.
