A postgenomic body: histories, genealogy, politics

This article sets the stage for a genealogy of the postgenomic body. It starts with
the current transformative views of epigenetics and microbiomics to offer a more
pluralistic history in which the ethical problem of how to live with a permeable
body – that is plasticity as a form of life – is pervasive in traditions pre-dating and
coexisting with modern biomedicine (particularly humoralism in its several ramifications).
To challenge universalizing narratives, I draw on genealogical method to
illuminate the unequal distribution of plasticity across gender and ethnic groups.
Finally, after analysing postgenomics as a different thought-style to genomics, I
outline some of its implications for notions of plasticity. I argue that postgenomic
plasticity is neither a modernistic plasticity of instrumental control of the body nor
a postmodernist celebration of endless potentialities. It is instead closer to an altermodernistic
view that disrupts clear boundaries between openness and determination,
individual and community.