ABSTRACT
In the mid-nineteenth century, evolutionary theory had drawn renewed attention to the need for an explanation of heredity, but Charles Darwin’s offering, pangenesis, still assumed that all parts of the body contribute to production of particles, ‘gemmules’ which influence the formation of the next generation. Human genetics in the 1980s and 1990s has been dominated by genetic mapping and sequencing in the form of the international Human Genome Project. The Project has been hailed as the quest for the ‘holy grail of human genetics’ by its supporters, and as ‘mediocre science, terrible science policy’ by its critics. The Human Genome Project is a nexus for two expressions of power, the disciplining of entire populations (bio-politics) and the regulation of human bodies (anatamo-politics). Populations will become defined by reference to the genetic body, expressed in monolithic terms as ‘the’ human genome.
