Transgenerational Epigenetics, or the Spectral History of the Flesh

Abstract

Recent advances in the field of genetics, more specifically the substantiation of epigenetic inheritance, have expanded our understanding of genetic transmission. We will try to demonstrate here that a Merleau-Pontian approach to some of these recent findings opens, not only new perspectives on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of the flesh, but provides new insight into the notion of biological inheritance. What we intend to focus on in this paper is the inheritability or intergenerational transmission of environmental factors. This essentially amounts to the inheritability of phenotypic changes resulting from environmental factors, though these changes may in fact only become manifest in later generations. What we wish to argue is that this amounts to what is, in a certain sense, the transmission of experiences of past-generations via the body (i.e., via epigenetic influence on phenotypic development) onto future offspring. We shall try to describe this – in Merleau-Pontian terms – as a certain form of transgenerational bodily memory or institution (Stiftung), which in turn institutes a style.