ABSTRACT
The notion of impressionable biologies aptly condenses the original non-modern intuition of a body constantly exposed to an immense number of external influences. This was an attentive and excitable body, but also a body constantly under pressure, at the mercy of the all-encompassing power of the environment, physical and social, with profound patriarchal and racialist resonances. If imprint is a key metaphor for conveying the notion that the environment leaves a durable mark on the genome, plasticity is probably the word that best captures the spirit of postgenomic times. Plasticity, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “the ability to be easily moulded or to undergo a permanent change in shape”, is a very complex notion. Archaeology aims at describing discursive practices and epistemic formations while abandoning neat normative distinctions between subjected and authorized knowledge. Albeit it is often believed that genealogy replaces archaeology, it is more correct to say that, in Foucault, genealogy supplements archaeology.
