The Body in Science Discourse and Culture

Cassiopeia Image Tour from Hubble Telescope

The notion that our bodies are our “property” can be seen as a myth. The materials that compose our bodies predate our material existence and will exist after we die. It will transform and exist in different states. For instance, our bodies are made of the same materials of the stars, hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, etc. We are part of a larger universe but the matter of the universe composes "us". “We are part of the nature we seek to understand” (Barad, p. 828).

“Methodological holism argues that the best way to study a complex system is to treat it as a whole” (Barker, p. 114).

In modern society we use science to try to understand ourselves and our environment, but this is ultimately  reductionism, by reducing both to it parts. However, this seems to be necessary to reach audiences of today who may not be able to understand scientific concepts pertaining to their daily lives within a larger framework. Additionally, the language of science itself is “language for a purpose” reducing concepts to functional parts that are deterministic, even though the body of knowledge they are addressing is continually changing and growing.

“This relationship between biology and culture can be described in specific ways for particular purposes”(Barker, p. 116).

The video posted below is an excerpt from a 2011 NOVA episode on epigenetics. Hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, it explores relatively new discoveries in the field of human genetics, namely those genetics that were thought to be “set in stone” and based entirely on inheritance, are now understood to be continuously modified and turned on and off by what scientists are calling an epigenome. Basically, we learn that what we “do” with our lives, what we eat, drink, or smoke, changes us on a genetic level.  In a sense, we are performing our daily lives onto our genetics, and they are reciprocating. This demonstrates both, greater plasticity of who we are, but also a deterministic causality. It is a double causality. We cause our genes and they cause us.

In the video, the doctor says people have a responsibility to the epigenome, and to their future generations. It seems that the engagement with the apparatus determines the phenomenon of gene expression, not an objective quality of the gene itself.  This is example of the way scientific discourse shapes the attitudes, values and beliefs pertaining to the body by appealing to emotion, which Barker says is a cultural construction.

References:

Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Gender and Science: New Issues, 28(3), 801-831. 

Barker, C. (2012) Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. London: Sage Publishing.