scienceXrhetoric

One of the classes that I'm taking this term goes by the ambiguous name of Biopolitics*. In essence, it's an interdisciplinary STS-type course that looks at the ways in which advances in contemporary biology are influenced by and have influenced various elements of society. The main text for the course is Michael Fortun's Promising Genomics: Iceland and deCODE Genetics in a World of Speculation. I'm only a chapter into the book so far, but even so it's clear that Fortun is a talented writer. Although he makes the argument (more or less explicitly) that science and rhetoric are deeply connected in the unstable, undecided world of contemporary genetic research, the first chapter of Promising Genomics, in a beautiful rhetorical move, demonstrates this structurally -- both on a macro level (the overall structure of the chapter) and on a micro level (through the use of chiasma, displayed in a scientific manner but utilized in a rhetorical manner).

Brilliant as the book may be, the course as a whole has been moving rather slowly. I suppose I should have expected as much, since it's only a junior-level course, and most of the people in the class have no previous training in HPS or STS. However, the slow pace of the course does have one advantage: It's allowed for extended reflection on the material that we have covered.

Over the last two weeks, much of our discussion has revolved around the difference between two models of scientific practice. The movement from Model 1 to Model 2 is fundamentally one of destabilization, in that the rigid systems and hierarchies of Model 1 are replaced with the interrelated actors of Model 2, each of which contribute to the formation and movement of the others.

What I find most interesting about this shift -- this act of destabilization -- is that the second model includes an ethical critique and demand that is not present (or perhaps is present, but hidden) in the first model. Model 2 places research practices, academic disciplines, political institutions, and media outlets in mutually influential relation to one another. Thus, any change in one area effects a change in another. Or, to take it further, any perceived change in one area effects change in another. It is this element of perception (which is closely linked to the subjectivity of the promise) that includes the ethical critiqueXdemand: Scientists should not only be concerned with the ethics of their methodological practice, but also with the ethics of their rhetorical practice. In other words, how they speak (whether amongst themselves, or to Congress, or to the public, etc.) is as important as what they do, precisely because it is the subjectivity of perception that drives the system, rather than the concrete accumulation of facts. It is for this reason that the truly important moment for the Human Genome Project was the joint press conference announcing the project's completion, rather than the actual completion of the project itself, which, in the case of one of the parties competing to complete the HGP, came somewhat later.

But what does this mean for the future of genomics? Any rhetorical move implies the existence of competing discourses. With this in mind, it seems safe to assert that the current state of affairs in genomics -- laden with rhetoric as it is -- is a myriad of competing discourses. But isn't the progression of science from complicated uncertainty to black-box, textbook-style facts itself dependent on the establishment of a hegemonic discourse in which (explicit) rhetorical moves play less and less of a role? If anything, the rapid progress of genomics research has only multiplied the range of discourses present at any one particular time, thus moving genomics even further from the hegemony necessary to pin down "facts" methodologically and rhetorically -- and consequently, further into territory in which the scientist is responsible not only for what he or she does, but what he or she says (and how he or she says it). The future is, of course, up for grabs, but if current trends continue it seems that the outcome may be an expression of science radically different than that of the traditional textbook-dissemination model.

*So far, the course seems to be unrelated to the Foucauldian sense of this term.