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On Genetics and Literature: Making “Biofictions”

April 29, 2021 @ 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

This talk will discuss artistic and scientific connections between molecular and literary language and meaning. Biofictions argues that understanding genetics and literature as a part of the shared creative medium of language with parallel syntactic and semiotic features, can broaden our understanding of both fields and their impacts on issues such as genetic determinism, human rights, and posthuman subject formations in the Age of Biology (1953-present). The concept of ‘biofictions’ applies to literature that directly engages with the entanglement of the life sciences and information science, not only on a thematic level, but also in its formal choices. But ‘biofictions’ also refers to alterations done to the strings of biomolecules, the ‘editing,’ ‘cutting,’ and ‘pasting’ of the genes. The imagination of biofictions produces forms that are biological, semiotic, and textual. These forms, in turn, reflect our ‘posthuman’ future. Important question to consider in this context are: who is controlling the writing of DNA, the posthuman body? What is the role of imagination in this process? And, what will be the ultimate form of the new language? 

Details

Date:
April 29, 2021
Time:
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Website:
https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/3f805e30de8f4133a09fe0989533726a

Venue

Virtual