ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the noises and silences through the analytical lens of bio-objectification, and discusses how this particular bio-object the transgenic mouse can be viewed as both the product of bio-objectification, and as a potential challenger of the same process. The structural conditions that frame the handling of transgenic mice include the legal context, the international, national and local policy regulation and the ethical review process. Transgenic animals constitute forms of techno-scientific hybrids, and, as such, simultaneously challenge and confirm cultural categories and dichotomies. The chapter focuses on consists of two case studies, with empirical data collected through ethnography, including observations and interviews. It shows how bio-objects become discursively constructed with the help of rhetorical strategies, by which some aspects are highlighted while others are silenced, how processes of homogeneity and heterogeneity work simultaneously, framing the transgenic mouse differently, and how the bio-objectification process, through a third dimension of transgeneity, can be challenged by the very objects it produces.
