Bloomsbury Academic Narrative in the Age of the Genome: Genetic Worlds (Explorations in Science and Literature)

Shortlisted for the 2021 BSLS Book PrizeThis book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by the Wellcome Trust. Genomic technologies have had a profound impact on understandings of what it means to be human and our links to the world we inhabit, and on practices of inhabiting the world. This book considers this impact across a range of literary forms, cultural practices, and political imaginaries, and argues that new descriptions of biological value introduced through practices of genomic sequencing from the late 1970s registered a broader crisis of narrative form. Examining a wide range of texts by Doris Lessing, Samuel Delany, Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, Kir Bulychev, Kazuo Ishiguro, Saidiya Hartman, Yaa Gyasi, Svetlana Alexievich, and Jeff VanderMeer, Narrative in the Age of the Genome casts new light on the intersections of genomics with politics of racism, sexuality, labour and gender, neoliberal economics and environmental crisis. Review 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.' --ScienceIntellectually rich and rewarding, this study ranges effortlessly across the fields of biology, socio-economic theory and philosophy, drawing on these perspectives to forge novel readings of a range of literary texts. Imaginative and astute in its reflections on genre and narrative form, it is beautifully written throughout. The argument is bold and original, grounded in rigorous research and always attentive to the specific biosocial contexts it explores. --Professor Clare Hanson, University of Southampton, UK About the Author Lara Choksey is a Research Fellow at the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at the University of Exeter, UK.