As a mode of narrative, scientific accounts of extinction trace the decline of species into total loss. With anthropogenic extinction, the narrative of loss becomes an apocalyptic mode of expression: extinction, the endpoint in the drama of threatened and endangered species, resists representation in both popular science writing and fiction. This paper examines how techniques of genetic science and assisted reproduction, such as DNA extraction from recently extinct animals and cross-species surrogacy in backbreeding, work within and against the apocalyptic mode of expression in extinction accounts. Hypothetical and fictional scenarios of recuperating extinction through these techniques reflect the bodiless, multi-medial viability of DNA. Developing Jay Clayton's notion of "genome time," the sense of a "perpetual present" created by the infinite mutability of the DNA molecule, I examine woolly mammoth and thylacine recuperation efforts to show how such projects revise evolutionary narratives to fulfill cultural imperatives.
The recently extinct thylacine, endemic to Australia, has become a potent cultural icon in the state of Tasmania, with implications for Australian ecotourism and Tasmanian conservation strategies. While the thylacine's iconicity has been analyzed by naturalists and cultural historians, its significance in Tasmanian tourism has yet to be examined. Thylacine representations in tourism-related writings and images, because of their high degree of ambivalence, function as a rich site of conflicting values regarding national identity and native species protection. Drawing on cultural studies of the thylacine and constructivist theories of tourism, this study identifies and documents three polarities in thylacine representation: the thylacine as wild yet domesticated, present yet absent, and an Australian national—yet distinctly regional—subject. A close reading of contradictory textual and visual elements in tourist guides, travel writing, specialized maps, and museum exhibits illuminates ongoing debates about Australian econationalism in the global tourism economy.
This article analyzes the sex and gender identity rhetoric of members of the Intersex Society of North America, which is a self-help and advocacy group whose main goals are to stop unnecessary genital surgery in ambiguously sexed infants and make medical histories available to adult intersexuals. By examining the organization's indebtedness to feminist and gay/lesbian/transperson theory and practice, the article shows how these political movements have progressively challenged the equation of sex with gender and how intersexuality exemplifies the theoretical and practical problems of identity politics.
Genetic medicine, which consists mostly of screening tests for certain heritable diseases but may soon include treatment for heritable diseases based on molecular genetics, is made possible by two critical junctures in the textual representation of medical subjects. The first is the transformation of organic human genetic material into computationally sophisticated data, and the second is the subsequent conversion of these vast quantities of genetic data into intellectual property through gene patenting and screening-test marketing. This article examines these representational changes in medical subjects through an intertextual and rhetorical analysis of the documentation surrounding the discovery, patenting, and marketing of the breast cancer susceptibility gene BRCA1 by the biotechnology company Myriad Genetics. It identifies the impact of these changes on the analysis of the risks and benefits associated with screening for heritable diseases.
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