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IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT Imagining Humans in the Age of DNA: Genetics and Contemporary British Fiction

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IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT Imagining Humans in the Age of DNA: Genetics and Contemporary British Fiction View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Spiral - Imperial College Digital Repository IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT Imagining Humans in the Age of DNA: Genetics and Contemporary British Fiction ANDRÉIA AZEVEDO SOARES Submitted in part candidature for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and Diploma of Imperial College London 2013 This research work was supported by a grant from 2 Declaration of Originality I, Andréia Azevedo Soares, hereby certify that this thesis was written by me, except where otherwise acknowledged, and it is the record of a research project conducted by me within the Department of Humanities of Imperial College London. 3 Abstract This thesis examines to what extent modern genetics has influenced novelists to adopt a more deterministic view of human beings. It has been claimed that molecular biology, behavioural genetics and evolutionary psychology have challenged traditional ideas about humankind. My hypothesis is that if gene-centred disciplines changed the way we see ourselves, then this would have implications for the literary novel, a genre that depends greatly on representations of humans. In analysing how genetics was incorporated in contemporary British fiction, I try to uncover the ways in which the human characters deal with – or are constrained or empowered by – scientific products or concepts. In addition, I seek to understand what novelists know and think about human genetics, and whether they believe it influenced their stories. Attention is also paid to novelists’ relationship with scientists’ cognitive authority. Specifically, I am interested in whether experts and scientific knowledge were positioned hierarchically above lay audiences and other forms of knowledge. To answer those questions, extended semi-structured interviews and textual analysis were chosen as main research methods. Six literary novels were selected for analysis. This corpus consists of: A.S. Byatt’s A Whistling Woman , Carole Cadwalladr’s The Family Tree , Margaret Drabble’s The Peppered Moth , Maggie Gee’s The Ice People , Simon Mawer’s Mendel’s Dwarf and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas . The main conclusion of this project is that novelists are able to incorporate ideas about genetics in their texts without simply perpetuating reductionist discourses. Literary novels offer several advantages compared to the expository writing: they are a flexible literary form; deal imaginatively with the human experience; and effortlessly accommodate multiple perspectives, open-ended questions and complex ideas such as doubt and ambiguity. As such, this genre affords the opportunity to explore contemporary science as a provisional, contingent and socially-embedded endeavour. 4 Acknowledgements This research would not have been possible without the financial support of Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. On an academic level, I would like to thank Nick Russell for all the advice and knowledgeable insights during the supervision of this thesis. His guidance and patience were crucial to the outcome. This project also benefited greatly from the contributions of Felicity Mellor, my co-supervisor. Alice Bell, Jon Turney and Steve Webster offered me research tips or bibliographical suggestions. I thank them all. It was a privilege to develop my thesis at Imperial College South Kensington Campus. I wish to thank the Humanities Department and the Central Library staff for their professionalism and promptness in facilitating my research. A word of gratitude must also be left to Katie Böber, Catarina Fonte, Ana Lesher, Zita Martins and Paula Salgado. They all made my life at the university exciting and thought-provoking. From PÚBLICO, my employee, I would like to thank Manuel Carvalho, deputy editor-in-chief, who believed in me and approved my leave of absence. I would like to express my appreciation for the professors who supported this adventure by writing recommendation letters: Mário Barbosa, Alexandre Quintanilha, Maria João Reynaud and Manuel Sobrinho Simões. I am also deeply grateful to the novelists who agreed to be interviewed. Many people helped and encouraged me during this research project. This work is particularly indebted to Justa Barbosa, Raquel Carvalho, Maria José Cruz, António Granado, Ana Maria Henriques, Daniela Oliveira and Richard Zimler. I have not enough words to express my gratitude to Raquel Ribeiro. My project benefited from her comments from the grant application to the final manuscript. Few people have the honour to have such a devoted friend. Finally, I would like to thank my family (Pedro, Papai, Toninho, Andrea and Ana Carolina) for their unconditional love. A special message of recognition goes to my mother, for taking care of my newborn baby while I was reviewing the manuscript in its multiple versions. Without her help this project would not have an end. I am proud to have passed her mitochondrial DNA on to my daughter. 5 To Pedro 6 Contents Introduction ………………………………………………………………….. 8 Chapter One: Novel Summaries ……………………………………………. 31 Chapter Two: Popular Science Authors …………………………………….. 51 Chapter Three: Methodology ……………………………………………….. 68 Chapter Four: Margaret Drabble’s The Peppered Moth ……………………. 82 Chapter Five: Maggie Gee’s The Ice People ……………………………….. 99 Chapter Six: Simon Mawer’s Mendel’s Dwarf ……………………………. 119 Chapter Seven: A.S. Byatt’s A Whistling Woman …………………………. 142 Chapter Eight: Carole Cadwalldr’s The Family Tree ……………………... 158 Chapter Nine: David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas ……………………………… 171 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………… 182 References ………………………………………………………………… 191 Appendix I ………………………………………………………………… 206 Appendix II ……………………………………………………………….. 207 Appendix III ………………………………………………………………. 208 Appendix IV ………………………………………………………………. 209 7 Introduction The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a revolution in the life sciences. From the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA in 1953 to the completion of the rough draft sequence of the human genome in 2000, there were remarkable scientific breakthroughs that captured media attention globally and transformed the way we talk about genetics. Genes emerged both in popular culture and public discourse as a new source of anxieties regarding determinism, discrimination and perfectionism. They also emerged as a new source of answers for ancient (and yet crucial) questions about origins, identity, immortality and human potential. These social and scientific contexts naturally have an impact not only in our view of human nature but also in its cultural representations. This thesis sets out to examine to what extent modern genetics has been influencing novelists to adopt a more deterministic view of human beings. By genetic determinism I mean that personality traits or behaviours are totally, or almost entirely, caused by genes (Nordgren 2003: 1145). As such, humans are regarded as sophisticated animals controlled by their evolutionary past. This mechanistic portrait of human nature implies a gene-centred view of evolution: the gene is the unit of selection, and gene selection is perceived as the key to understanding aspects of human behaviour such as altruism or violence. Conversely, a less deterministic view of human beings has its roots in humanism (Malik 2001a). It tends to reassert confidence in human capacities, presenting humans as exceptional beings, conscious agents able to transcend both genes and environment. My approach will be to analyse six selected texts; they were chosen to represent a range of different approaches from thirteen recent literary novels dealing with genetics. My aim is to uncover the ways in which characters deal with (or are constrained or empowered by) scientific products or concepts. Specifically, I will try to explore how their journeys and outcomes in the narratives express ideas more related to human freedom or genetic determinism. Literary novels were selected according to the following criteria: all texts were written by British authors and published in the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007; and they all touch in some way 8 on human genetic research or its medical possibilities. By design, this thesis focuses solely on human genetics. This means that, for the purpose of this study, I will not discuss genetic modification in plants and animals. This analysis is supplemented by interview material produced specifically for this study. The data were collected by means of extended semi-structured interviews with six British authors: A.S. Byatt, Carole Cadwalladr, Margaret Drabble, Maggie Gee, Simon Mawer and David Mitchell. Interviews lasted between one and two hours (when in person) and were conducted in the authors’ own homes in London (Carole Cadwalladr, Margaret Drabble and Maggie Gee), in an Edinburgh coffee shop (Simon Mawer) and via e-mail (A.S. Byatt and David Mitchell). They covered many aspects of their perspectives, experiences and objectives when writing the selected novels. The information gathered included authors’ views of human nature and patterns of consumption of media products containing scientific information. In this study, I will focus solely on contemporary literary novels. To limit the broad range of related genres in fiction, I will not consider crime novels and science fiction. Both are genres in their own right. Science fiction also constitutes, along with news media, the area of public knowledge that has received the most scholarly attention when the mediated dimension of public culture is investigated (Bates 2005).
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