Exposing queer biotechnology via queer archaeology: The quest to (re)construct the human body from the inside out

Abstract

Relatively new endeavours in the biological and micro-sciences attempt to construct and reconstruct the often diseased, disabled, or otherwise imperfect human body. As such, all bodies, due to their imperfections, may be labelled 'Queer'. Queer archaeology becomes the perspective from which these new sites and their related artefacts may be exposed, assessed, and reconstructed. In this way, the metaphorical use of archaeology yields potential rhetorical and discursive fields by which contemporary -not just 'ancient' -bodies and sites may be 'unearthed'. The simultaneously virtual and real (non)corporeal contexts of biotechnology and genetic engineering enable the development of queer archaeology. This paper is an attempt to open this field of inquiry further, thereby rendering this a substantive, political, and biocultural topic for future excavation.