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Plotting genes: A feminist cultural study of popular science and articulations of Nature as genes in the story-line of evolution Cecilia Âsberg
What is the recipe for a human being? Is human behaviour genetically conditioned by evolution from time immemorial? Female and male; are these some kind of cultural, genetic, or even animalistic predisposition? If, and how, will the men of technoscience enhance our lives? What will the biotech future be like? What counts as nature and natural for us living in a post-industrial enterprise culture? Questions like these are intimately connected to our understandings of our present, our own cultural context and our everyday assumptions about science and/as progress. Interacting with these ideas are, among other things, our varied notions of gender, ethnicity, scientific knowledge and our everyday understanding of the world. Popular science presents some of the answers to these questions in an informative, didactic and entertaining way. The popular science magazine "Illustrated Science" was for me, personally, a weapon in my teenage struggle to emancipate myself from my upbringing in the Nonconformist Church. Popular science, though not a neutral medium, reflects our culture. We encounter it almost every day through radio, TV-programs, satellite channels and, as in the case here, monthly magazines. Popular science, as well as science (1) , may be considered a story telling practise, and as such it creates meaning, structure and coherence. top (1) Donna Haraway (1989):"Scientific practice may be considered a kind of story-telling-practice - a rule governed, constrained, historically changing craft of narrating the history of nature." Donna Haraway (1989) Primate Visions. Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Science, Routledge, New York/London, s. 4. top (2) http://www.annonsbolaget.nu/ilveten.htm Source: Orvesto Konsument 99:2. See "Om Illustrerad Vetenskap"/About Illustrated Science. top (3) See: http://www.annonsbolaget.nu/nat.geo.htm and http://www.annonsbolaget.nu/illvetlasarkrets.html top (4) http://www.annonsbolaget.nu/illvetlasarkrets.html top (5) Donna Haraway (1997) Modest_Witness@Second-_Millennium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse™, Routledge, New York, s. 138. top (6) This paper is based on my pilotstudy (in swedish: "Genes: den populärvetenskapliga narrativen") made at Departement of Gender studies, Linköping University, Sweden, 2000.
fiction have been excavated by Haraway (1989) and I have no interest in separating them, but chose rather to see them as important elements of the narrative of popular science as it is articulated in Illustrated Science´s notions of evolution and genes. Their practise may be seen as the writing of the history of nature - the popular version. Situated as a young woman in the Academy, I am different, and as a person trained in the Arts I am also unfamiliar with the domain of technoscience. I am also a demographic oddity in the readership of this particular magazine. But as a tourist in these fields I might be able to view Illustrated Science´s world differently and see remarkable things where others see nothing out of the normal. top (7) Donna Haraway (1997), p. 41: "Literally, chronotope means topical time, or a topos through which temporality is organized. A topic is a commonplace, a rhetorical site." I use it as a rhetoric figure of mythological time-space. top (8) Illustrated Science no 11-16 in the year of 1999 and no 1-6 in the year of 2000. top (9) N. Katherine Hayles (1996), "Narratives of artificial life", i: FutureNatural. Nature, science, culture. (edited by George Robertson, Melinda Mash, Lisa Tickner, Jon Bird, Barry Curtis and Tim Putnam), Routledge, London & New York, s. 151. top (10) This paper is based on a pilotstudy made at Department of Gender studies, Linköping University, Sweden. Not all of the material (empirical- theory-analysis) from my pilot study can, though, be fully presented in this paper. The Primate Genesis
In the graphically rich appendix of issue 13/1999 of Illustrated Science; "From ape to man" the main focus is on the evolution of mankind. In the search for the missing link - the half man, half ape - the latest genetic technology is now helping the scientists sort out our kinship. The article has a illustration showing how closely related we are to (in kinship order) bonabons, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. Every race is portrayed, and next to the bonabon we see a black African man in traditional costume, presented in relation to the bonabon. The racism, that the article itself tries to avoid repeatedly, by asserting the meaningless use of the genetic notion of "race" within humankind, is instead articulated in the illustrations. The genetic similarities humankind shares is one mainmessage of the text - in spite of our different appearances that the pictures emphasise. The next page reveals pictures of these colourful different ethnic looks. Men to the left, and women to the right "from all of the world" are put on display. (11) Though these amazingly different portraits of six men and six women are being cut out and put together from very different (sic.) contexts. But the man and woman, maybe from different parts of the African continent, are highlighted next to the text. "Adam came from Africa" and "Eve came from Africa" although the article itself contained a anti-racist message. The pictures around the text made sure that the mythic story line, connecting primates to the primitives, and a contemporary black African man to the primitive myth of origin, was un-interrupted. No white man is portraid, and that can be read as if white men, as the readers, have no ethnicity. Dark-skinned people (two men and one women) are graphically simulated as closer to the primitive and the primates.(12) Apes, or primates, are often articulated as the closest relatives to humankind. For example: the magazine has appointed the year 2000 the year of the orangutan. In a series of articles concerning the orangutans and the shrinking rainforests of Borneo, their campain has been named "Aktion: Orangutang". This salvation project is vividly described by numerous photographs of the red apes in their natural habitat, but also through severely suffering young ones in cages or being badly burnt and hospitalised. Illustrated Science is declaring that the magazine is making a statement and that the project, sponsored by the magazine and the readers, is divided into supporting an orphanage, planting trees and research from the air.(13) The introductory article concerns this project Action: Orangutan, and appeals to our sentiments trhough a small baby oranugtan which look deeply into the eye of the camera.
This article is named "Our red cousin" and the connotation of kinship is clearly put on display as well as the analogous depiction of starving children of Sudan and Ethiopia as been shown on Swedish television. Described in a way connoting both anthropmophy and philantrophy, this is also displayed as a special kinship - not like that with other animals. ("The eyes are not empty as with other animals.")(15) The next page shows two pictures, one of a female with a baby and one with a lonely male. The female is portrayed as a saint with her eyes rolled up to heaven, and the baby clinging to her side suckling her breast. The text under the picture tells us about her "motherhood". top (11) Illustrated Science n o 13/1999, Appendix "From ape to man", p. 4-7. top (12) Illustrated Science n o 13/1999, Appendix "From ape to man", p. 4-7. top (13) Illustrated Science n o 2/2000, p. 40. The Action: Orangutan presents articles in the issues 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the year 2000 (and probably the rest of the year). top (14) The citations are translated from Illustrated Science no 2/ 2000, p. 30. Photography by Bo Øksneberg. top (15) Illustrated Science n o 2/2000, p. 30.
Reading this image of antropomorphed motherhood in female orangutans, it almost becomes a parody of the Christian motif of Madonna with child (-and, as if it where in technicolour, we can almost hear the animals from the Disney movie "The Jungle Book" talk admiringly of her love and care so "legendary throughout the kingdom of animals".) The picture next to hers is that of the male orangutan. Even this one is photographed as something of a parody. The red, stocky male leads my unruly thought to cartoon/film heroes and overaged rockidols. "With age the males get long hair, big cheeks and a powerful roar."(17) The humanisation of the monkeys in the pictures and texts seems to have a comic effect (not at least because they call forth flashback from childhood of funny posters on the walls with orangutans or chimpanzees in gendered human clothes). The article motivates the project with our close genetic kinship: "Only three percent differs " (- where else but in the discourse of the genome could a headline this inconclusive be understood?).
A suggestion is made that, maybe through its humanlike and highly gendered characterisation in the magazine, the orangutan is the best link to the mysteries of human evolution and therefor, indeed, important to save for the after world.
In the article "African monkeys are living like primitive tribes" (20) our kinship is articulated in a somewhat different, more openly racist, as well as (hetero-)sexist, way. It is hinted that this active, monkey-entrepreneur is of male gender and the females, on the other hand, are passive - not finding new ways and not courting the males. The mythic figure of the apeman is here insinuated and he surely is active and he surely is a man. One article depicts a darkskinned, apelike, but very manly human ancestor "The Conqueror of the World":
The admiration in this article cannot be mistaken. This is Man the Toolmaker who makes his way in the world - and this is only the beginning of mankind! top (16) Illustrated Science n o 2/2000, p. 33. top (17) Illustrated Science n o 2/2000, p. 33. top (18) Illustrated Science n o 2/2000, p. 33 f. top (19) Illustrated Science n o 15/1999, p. 16. top (20) Illustrated Science n o 15/1999, p. 16. top (21) Illustrated Science n o 13/1999, Appendix "From ape to man", p. 23. Present Genetic Behaviour
The chronology, from the past to the future, is dependant on the causality of genes - much as it is depicted in the genetic discourse of today. The causal connection between our myths of origin and supposed behaviour of today is elaborated in Illustrated Science, which is genuinely concerned with the question of what causes these differences between the men and women of today. In artcles drawing upon physiological psychology and other behavioural sciences, (as well as biology and zoology) genes are given much room to explain these differences. Here some of the biological explanations for fe/male behaviour will be described as they are articulated in Illustrated Science as the "development of sexual differences during the evolution of man".(22) For example one behavioural article describes itself in the headlines: "New research maps out the expressions that show our feelings: The Alphabet of the Face".(23) The initial example in the article describes the picture of the hunting man who had an advantage if he could show expressions of fear, anger and suprise to the other hunters. But in spite of the example of our ancestors as hunting men, women are said to be superior to men in decoding and expressing facial signals because of, the article refer to the book of David Geary, professor of Psychology, their "universal" ancient situation as brides given away.
The small headline indicates some differences of power here in this familyrelationship - not between men and women, but between the young woman and her mother in law. ("Smile to the mother in law") The male development of facial expressions are also inherited from the forefathers.
The genetic pokerface is inherited from the forefathers of men. The article runs on an undercurrant of causality where the patrilinierity is expressed by the numerous notations of "our forfathers". This sexual difference, inherited via evolution, then makes women today superior in expressing the emotions of "joy, fear and, in particular, sadness".(26) But, men are superior in their own way, the article concludes, when it comes to expressing surprise, contempt and wrath. These emotional expressions are also being portrayed by men and women in (cut and pasted) photographies next to the article. top (22) Illustrated Science n o 13/1999, p. 31. top (23) Illustrated Science n o 13/1999, p. 30-33. The article "Alphabet of the face" is written by Birgitte Svennevig. top (24) Illustrated Science n o 13/1999, p. 31. top (25) Illustrated Science n o 13/1999, p. 31. top (26) Illustrated Science n o 13/1999, p. 31. all because of our genes.(27) It is quite interesting how the word "choose" loses it actual meaning, since women are being controlled by our genes. (Of course, the graphically manipulated and morphed, photographic pictures of masculine and feminine male faces are also very interesting.) The causality of genes are explained:
Women are thus portraid as in the service of genetic patrimony. The strong genes are gendered in themselves, they are masculine - and women are sometimes depicted as mere vessels of these strong genes (as in something of a vulgar version of reproduction depicted by Aristotle). "Survival of the fittest" has a tendency in these texts to become survival of the strongest.(29) Genes seems to have an egoistic agency of their own. Reducing fe/male behaviour to nothing but certain proteinmaking components has evoked criticism in the eyes of feminist scientists. The biologist Hillary Rose (1994:190) writes that "genes respond to changes in their environment with a norm of reaction which makes simple deductions about `genetic causes´ fallacious"(30) and Anne Fausto Sterling (1985:.88) summarises: "Let us conclude by stating that "pure" biological explanation of anything as complex and unpredictable as human behaviour would by its very nature be unequal to the task. Genetic information specifically encodes for the amino acid sequences of particular proteins.[…] In other words, referring to genetic ability to perform math or music, or to a biological tendency towards aggressive behaviour obscures rather than informs." (31)
To claim the causality of genetic evolution on fe/male behaviour is, as we have seen a powerful tale of explanation in our time as it is articulated in popular science magazines as Illustrated Science. Read as a story telling practice, the mythological origin of man put together with the sociobiological(32) explanations of today is becoming a very neat narration where chronology and causality collide. This is a highly gendered story where genetic reductionism, evolutionism and sociobiological conservatism explains the social injustices between women and men of today. top (27) Illustrated Science n o 6/2000, p. 19; "Women choose away short men" and Illustrated Science n o 14/1999, p. 21; "Fertile women choose machomen". top (28) Illustrated Science n o 14/1999, p. 21 top (29) Oswald Spengler summarised the theory of Darwins about the natural selection as "survival of the fittest", which in many cases instead is being read and understood as "survival of the strongest" for example in Illustrated Science n o 14/1999 s. 21). Poul Lübcke (1988) Filosofilexikonet, Forum, p. 532. top (30) Hillary Rose (1994) Love, Power and Knowledge: Towards a Feminist Transformation of the Sciences, Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis, p. 190. top (31) Anne Fausto Sterling (1985) Myths of Gender. Biological Theories About Women and Men. Revised, Second, Edition 1992, BasicBooks, New York, p. 88.f. top (32) "Sociobiologists believe that most human behavior is genetically inherited" and "Sociobiologists emphasize natural selection to the exclusion of other mechanisms of evolution." These are some characteristics put forth by Fausto Sterling (1985: 168, 171.) The study of collective genetic traits in a population is the key in common evolutionarytheory - and it is based on quantitative data collection. The sociobiologist on the other hand, Sterling describes, writes about behaviours as if they were genetic traits although they know they are generalising. "They end up, therefor, using evolutionary theory based on the inheritance of particular traits to analyze behaviors that - if they have a genetic basis - must be multiply determined." Anne Fausto Sterling also describes the way sociobiologists use the theory of evolution as a singular, universal theory."There is not yet an accepted analysis of evolution but a number of traditions of analysis, some predominating in the United States, other in Europe." (p. 170). Genes and gender of the future
The statement that the discourses surrounding our genetic future in fact are contemporary disputes concerning, among other things, gender and sexuality will now be examined through my readings of articles that articulate some fantastic and speculative futures in Illustrated Science. The future seems to provide "a clean slate, or a blank screen, onto which we can project our fascinations and fears" as Claudia Springer (1991:318) puts it. Some things that a couple of decades ago were science fiction are now part of everyday knowledge. I have focused on the simulations of future that Illustrated Science blends together with speculation about the possibilities of biopolitics. The superhuman intentions of genetics are the prism through which we follow the narrative line of this retold story. In a presentation of the Human Genome Project, we can read about the futuristic potentials and superhuman consequences of the project as it is described in the popular science magazine:
The series STATUS 2000 in Illustrated Science presents one discipline from the year 1900 to 2100 in every issue of the magazine. Issue 13/1999 described the history of genetics and on the time axis, the year 1999 contained the by-line: "Maybe we know to much". In the futuristic speculations that followed many prophecies were made. For example the year 2030 was said to be the (definite?) end of the HUGO project and by then all diseases connected to genes were mapped and effectively curable. In addition, genetic manipulation of foetuses could offer them immunity to deadly diseases like AIDS.(34) In the STATUS 2000 of Medicine we can read about the "evolugenetic" predictions of a final solution in 2031 to the search for the so called missing link.
In the mentioned appendix "From ape to man" there where speculations about this almost hundred year long search for the half ape/half man creature and how the search for it made frauds like the Piltdownman possible (a head put together of a human scull and orangutan jawbone). In the future it seems like that the scientists of the nineteenth century were right - after all, (at least in the text of Illustrated Science).
top (33) Illustrated Science n o 5/ 2000, p. 16-17. top (34) Illustrated Science n o 13/1999, p. 70. "STATUS 2000: Genetics" top (35) Illustrated Science n o 1/2000, p. 72 "STATUS 2000: Medicin".
couples. The scene is a Caribbean island and the American and Japanese sponsors withdraw when the expensive practise of the clinic comes to the public attention. The picture above the mini-story is of seven babies, all of them gender neutral in diapers, but certainly raced. Four of the seven babies are blond and light skinned.(36)
We find the same kind of grande finale in the year 2100 of STATUS 2000: Medicine. After three separate research teams (an American , a Japanese and a German team) succeed in 2090 in creating artificial life in the laboratory, the decade after provides an equal achievement:
In Illustrated Science there are many more artcles not presented here that concerns the future(-s) of genes/genetics - among them a very interesting article about "The Bright side of cloning" which I will only mention briefly. The discussions of many feministits -like Shulamit Firestone (1970) and Gene Corea (1985)- are made very explicit. (The process of cloning can in this article be read as androgenealogical ectogenesis).(39) Genesis as popular science story-telling
The twined story line (as of the double helix) of the genetic plot has been mapped out with the help of the mythic figures one meets mise-en-scene along the meta-narrative of evolution. The myths of origin centre the chronology of primates (orangutans) and imaginary apemen. In the present we see the contemporary hu/wo/man behaviour being placed in a genetic causal nexus, and the science fiction future of the genetics articulates the intentions of god-tricking scientists with the power over life and death in their hands, engineering the genetically enhanced supermen of Futurama in Illustrated Science (issues 11-16/1999 and 1-6/2000). top (36) Illustrated Science n o 13/1999, p.71. "STATUS 2000: Genetics". top (37) Illustrated Science n o 13/1999, p.71. "STATUS 2000: Genetics". top (38) Illustrated Science no 1 /2000, p. 72 "STATUS 2000: Medicine". top (39) Illustrated Science n o 6/ 2000, p. 31 f. "The Bright Side of Cloning". top (40) Sarah Franklin (1997): Embodied Progress: A cultural account of assisted conception. Routledge, London & New York, s. 99. In this passage she also describes the work of Susan Squiers (1994: 294) och Gilian Beers (1983: "Darwin´s plot").
A reading of the ideals/idols of Science that has been put forward in Illustrated Science tendency toward universalism, positivism and Harawayian "god-tricking science". In "STATUS 2000" the overwhelming picture is that of both evolution and science, as progress. Progress in the service of mankind. The theory of evolution, in the magazine articulated as a universal theory (it is after all popular science and should not be too detailed), and, as the model of genetic explanations, generate linking analogies between society and nature and back again as displayed in the chronological story line "From Ape to Man" and descriptions of the fe/male orangutans. These creatures are simulated as woman-ly and man-ly. They are being anthropomorphised and stands as figures of how natural and therefor correct our own contemporary gendered behaviour is. The apes are articulated with contemporary human words as female/motherly or male/entrepreneurial. Later on in the analysis of contemporary, highly gendered, human behaviour, humans are explained by the ancient ape-like forefathers (mostly) and foremothers. The idiom of evolution becomes a powerful actant to explain development, progress and enhancement - not just in society, but also, (foremost in our genetic plotting) in the nature of humanity so that the future will see us as Gods of Life. Man the Toolmaker conquered the world, then went into laboratories and gained the power of mapping and sequencing the human genome. After that he went on in a blaze of glory to take the laws of Nature (natural selection) into his own skilled hands, creating himself superhumanly "in a cosmic act of onanism", as Donna Haraway (1997:149) put it. In this it is clearly stated that humans, as scientists and us reading about and benefiting from them, stand outside nature looking at and tampering with it, as described in the futuristic texts of STATUS 2000 when scientists in the year of 2100 create life in labs as well as genetically enhanced superhumans. The heroes of Science are depicted as detached and distant (and pardoxically somewhat nearsighted), unveiling, mapping and conquering Nature for the benefit of mankind. Like this we can read the gene story of Illustrated Science as chronology and causality - but we can also read its intentionalities. top (41) Sarah Franklin (1997) p. 10 and p. 64. This is not the only Christian metaphor for this monumental project: "Th Holy Grail" and "Book of Life" are others. See The Code of Codes: Scientific and social issues in the human genome project." (Edit) Daniel J. Kevles & Leroy Hood, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 1992, p. 3. (in the article about cloning we never saw the double helix pulled out of either a woman´s or an ewe´s eggs as they were emptied for the benefit of an always male clone or stemcell). But as in Action: Orangutan, where orangutans were simulated as needing our help and as helpless figures of "nature under threat", it is also possible to re-read the story so that we, the humans, distanced with the help of photographic techniques and geography, badly need these orangutan persons for the purpose of mirroring the "natural" divisions of human males and females and also for retrieving our genetic origins. And, more down to basics, for the survival of ourselves as part of the whole world, because even a small-town Swede could be affected if there were no more orangutans living in the annihiliated rainforests of Borneo. To summarise, there can be found four different kind of agencies in the apparatus of popular science production; the storyteller, the narrative, the instruments of production (cameras and computers) and the consumers of popular science. The journalist of popular science is our storyteller, the computers, the mise-en-scén and cameras (that also create the distance between "us and them") are the story producers. In the narrative there are lot of starring actors in the role for Nature (orangutans, genes and so on) and Culture (scientists) and - of course - we are, the readers and consumers of popular science. Cecilia Âsberg
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