Transmuting Humans

Genomics, Nomad Sience, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy

Abstract

Genomics, a dominant paradigm in the life sciences today, promises applications that will modify humans and other organisms at the genetic level. Still, the prospect of human transformation remains something highly controversial, and cannot be articulated openly within the dominant scientific discourse. In this paper I look at two alternative sources: Susan Oyama’s Developmental Systems Theory and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. These texts bring transformation into focus not narrowly as a human project, but as immanent to life. The specificity and significance of these texts can be understood through an elaboration of Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of “nomad science” and “minor literature.”