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Genetic Fundamentalism or the Cult of the Gene

Marc Bloch University in Strasbourg

The notion of information puts the human, the animal and the vegetable all on the same plane, and tends to dissolve the previous specificities of these categories. DNA, in this way, is fetishized. Also, the notion of information, and of the gene, has moved from the domain of expert or technical culture to become a part of mass culture: a development that has important social consequences. The human body is seen as a prototype that needs to be tested or rectified (a consequence of the notion of ‘bad’ genes). From prenatal testing to the courtroom, it is implicitly around the notion a ‘life worth living’ (that is to say, of good morphological or genetic quality) that intense debates have arisen concerning the status of the body, of illness and of disability. Genetics is becoming part of the social environment, and it is setting itself up as a form of secular religion, with fundamentalist overtones. This article will analyse the anthropological shifts that have grown up around these new definitions of the human.

Key Words: anthropology • body • cyborg • disability • DNA • genetics • prenatal testing

Body & Society, Vol. 10, No. 4, 1-20 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/1357034X04047853


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