Narrative in the Age of the Genome

Lara Choksey is a Research Fellow at the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at the University of Exeter, UK.

• Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1: Deindustrialisation and the Selfish Gene Gene and StrikeOverpopulation and Whiteness: Doris Lessing’s The Memoirs of a SurvivorBrackets and Choice: Samuel Delany’s Trouble on TritonChapter 2: Cultivating Dreamworlds Mutual AidCultivating HumansThe Fifth Problem: Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic Genogeography: Kir Bulychev’s “Another’s Memory”Chapter 3: Memoir and the Laboratory Metaphors of the Human Genome ProjectWelfare, Profit, and the Vitruvian ManEnding Development: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me GoAlgorithmic Governmentality in Andrew Niccols’s GattacaChapter 4: Speculative Ancestry Ancestry MakingGenre, Genetics, and GenealogyHenrietta Lacks and Stolen FleshReparation, Romance, and KinlessnessLeaving: Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your MotherStaying: Yaa Gyasi’s HomegoingChapter 5: Toxic Infrastructure Chernobyl and the Postgenomic ConditionAdaptation, Improvisation, and EpigeneticsMutation and Fragmentation: Svetlana Alexievich’s Chernobyl PrayerTransitional Characterisation: Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogyConclusion: Disappearance, community, characterisation, genre, and scale Works Cited Index

Imbued throughout with deep concern for the peripheral, the possible, and the political … What emerges as most compelling out of this entire tapestry of readings is the author's interpretation of the limits and failures of the extraordinary ‘cultural power of the genome.'