Temporality and Belonging as Transdisciplinary Objects: Strategic Encounters between Queer Theory and Population Genetic Technologies

Abstract

This article asks how to study evasive and seemingly immaterial transdisciplinary phenomena such as affective dynamics that organize our technoscientific societies and cultures. The article argues that understanding such phenomena requires developing methodologies that engage fields of knowledge production that appear unrelated. The article uses the dynamics of temporality and belonging underlying population genetics as a case study. I show how two seemingly incompatible fields of knowledge production – queer theorization of temporality and population genetic technologies and practices – can together engender new insights on the ways in which temporality and belonging organize population genetic knowledge. I argue that neither field of knowledge production could achieve such insight alone; instead, insight emerges from the unexpected resonances as well as friction between the two fields. I develop this argument through an analysis of the configurations of temporality and belonging on the Genographic Project website.