Bio-Pedagogy: Genetic Literacy and Feminist Learning

Abstract

Lily Kay, a well-respected scholar of science studies, died in 2000 at the age of fifty-three from cancer. The year before, she published Who Wrote the Book of Life?: A History of the Genetic Code, which chronicles genetic research in the twentieth century. The book included a detailed critique of twentieth-century science's desire to control DNA, aiming to literally rewrite the Book of Life and master our biological fate. Dorothy Nelkin, another well-respected scholar of science studies, died at the age of sixty-nine from cancer in 2003. Among her many scientific interests was the cultural impact of DNA. She co-wrote the book The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon; her work was also highly critical of scientists' overly simplistic representations of genetics, including its impact on cancer research. I offer these two stories because they have come to symbolize, for me, the personal complexity of feminist critiques of science. Kay's and Nelkin's lives exemplify the compulsory reflection that accompanies critical and political work with biotechnology: both women spent much of their academic lives studying the very phenomenongenetics and diseaseto which they ultimately succumbed. We cannot escape our bodies, even as we critique the technologies of science that interact with our bodies. Feminist critics of