willil8+Comments+week+11+Transfer=Sex

I was going through my notes, trying to find a way to synthesize all of these readings. Something that Helmreich said stumbled out at me, "transfer"= the new "sex". (Helmreich 2003 342) Indeed, I feel as if these readings, and maybe even this course suggests exactly this. Let me examine what I have learned about Lifes and Languages from the past several weeks:


 * Lateral transfer of genes is redefining the way that we phenotype( or not) species . This affects bioprospecting and intellectual property in the open sea (which is controlled, hopefully, by governments and 'sustainability' oriented NGOS, but more likely by pharmaceutical companies). (Helmreich 2003)
 * Similarly there is a transfer of genetic material from the poor to the rich "blood, long a staple of physical anthropologists, has become rapidly transformed and commodified (as a source of exotic DNA, a raw material for biotechnology), and its collection is now examined in the context of the property rights of indigenous peoples and as part of the global ethics of a burgeoning biomedical trade in body parts" (Marks 2007)
 * Organ transfer, among other types of transfer, have created a new commodities market in living flesh that "breach[es] the conventional dichotomy between gifts and commodities and between kin and strangers."(Scheper-Hughes)
 * Flesh for flesh, Blood for blood, bones to create weapons, these are the folk tales describing the actions of East Indian Gods that Reddy invokes in her discussion of the transfer of blood as a "gift, social responsibility community service, and even nationalist service in concentric circles."(Reddy 458)
 * She also brings back the rhetoric of vampirism surrounding the Human Genome Project. (Reddy 431). This ties back to earlier class readings on Haraway (Haraway XXXX)
 * Landecker shows how the mechanism of agency for the 'cell as life' has changed from sexual reproduction to cell fusion (or nucleus removal and transfer to another cell)which she describes bluntly as "genetics without sex". (Landecker 217)
 * Doyle speaks of postvital biology; in the study of life as a living system "…life ceases to be confined to the interiority of a body and becomes capable of inhabiting locations between bodies: networks, futures, virtualities."(Doyle 20,42) With such easy transferability (by a lunch box cooler no less), life can have a range of 'values' monetary or otherwise. And 'futures' can be traded…..
 * During cross-body personality transfers, the calcutta chromosome (only found in non-regenerating tissue such as the brain) is scrambled and remade giving the "new" personality some elements of the two "old" personalities. This is done in a "controlled" fashion by experimentation by the anti-scientists to get the new Mangala/Goddess that they want to have.(Ghosh)

It appears that Helmreich's comment instead of being merely offhand and slightly inflammatory could possibly be //incredibly illuminating// as we move from the industrial revolution into the biological revolution. There is a new power-knowledge discourse overlaying the old, and it is all about the transfer of life. Rephrasing Foucault, "[Transfer] and power do not cancel or turn back against one another; they seek out, overlap, and reinforce one another. " (Foucault 48) As demonstrated above, this can be found in the literal transfer of flesh (organs)from the desperate impoverished to the dignified dying rich (Scheper-Hughes) or the transfer of blood from the educated East Indian to the American scientist (Reddy). This transfer can also be in the lateral genetic manipulations among Archaea (Helmreich 2003) and through the creation of hybrid tissues through genetic engineering.

If in fact "identities don’t pre-exist their strategic political innovations", then the change in identity of life to living system has been presupposed by the innovative components of a living system. (Doyle 20)(Scott) What are these components? The first that springs to mind is 1940 Charles Drew' s Blood Bank, first the idea of separating blood out, storing it, and assigning a value or banking it. But Landecker might disagree and say instead that the first time cells were deliberately cultured outside of the body, this then created a new view of cells as vigorous, autonomous, 'Life', that is easily transferable. (Landecker 33)

Though "taken for granted today, it is not at all inevitable that human cells [nor blood, nor genes, etc.] should be perceived as factories whose productive... capacities could be harnessed to make large volumes of [valuable autonomous biological material]." (Landecker 148) These 'strategic political innovations' (also known as biotechnology) have laid the groundwork for the transfer of life to dominate the power-knowledge discourse of the rich and poor for a long time to come.


 * Works Cited**

Foucault, Michel. __The History of Sexuality Volume 1__

Ghosh, Amitav. __The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery__ Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995

HELMREICH, STEFAN. "Trees and seas of information: Alien kinship and the biopolitics of gene transfer in marine biology and biotechnology" __American Ethnologist__ 30.3 (2003): 340-358.

HELMREICH, STEFAN. "After culture: Reflections on the apparition of anthropology in artificial life" __Cultural Anthropology__ 16.4 (Nov 2001): 612

Landecker, Hannah. __Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies__. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 2007.

Marks, Jonathan. "Grand Anthropological Themes" __American Ethnologist__ 34.2 (May 2007)

Reddy, Deepa S. "GOOD GIFTS FOR THE COMMON GOOD: Blood and Bioethics in the Market of Genetic" __Cultural Anthropology__ 22.3 (Aug 2007): 429

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. "The Last Commodity: Post-Human Ethics and the Global Traffic in 'Fresh' Organs" __Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems__ Ed. Aihwa Ong and Stephen J. Collier. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.

SCOTT, Joan W. "Fantasy Echo: History and the Construction of Identity" __Critical Inquiry__ 27.2