Abstract

This thesis is the product of research into the nature of the rhetorical interfaces that helped constitute contemporary life sciences. Specifically, I have attempted to articulate the ways in which rhetorical "softwares" have helped to install DNA as a site of somatic and discursive power in molecular biology. As such, On Beyond Living: Rhetorics of Vitality and Post Vitality in Molecular Biology can be seen as an attempt to situate, historicize, and deconstruct the technoscientific figuration of DNA as a sovereign "program" or "message." My argument can be abstracted into two strands. ;First, I argue that the rhetoric of "codes" and "programs" has played a constitutive, and not merely descriptive or persuasive, role in the ascent of molecular biology. Further, I argue that this role cannot be assimilated to the wiles of scientists or the cunning progress of science "itself." Instead, I argue for the ways in which rhetorical devices have "acted" to materialize the unspoken beliefs and values of early molecular biology. Here I rely on the tools and tendencies of post structuralism and rhetoric, tools and probes which help me map out the slippages, displacements and "errors" that are at the heart of the transformation of 20th century life sciences. ;The second strand of my argument focuses on the effects of these new articulations of "life" and "information", effects that I have dubbed "post-vital." Here I argue that a reorganization of technoscientific discourse has taken place, and that "life", in its 19th and 20th century formulation, is in fact no longer the object of biological research. My final chapter, "Emergent Power: Vitality and Theology in Artificial Life", analyzes one form of this shift, the pixel bodies of artificial life. Here I look at artificial life as a symptom of post vitality, where researchers pursue frenzied and beautiful attempts to mime an absent origin called "life."