Genetic Determinism

Abstract

Genetic determinism is the idea that, although environmental factors play a role as well, we basically are our genes, so that the personal genome (i.e., the genetic material of an individual) not only provides us with self-understanding but may also enable us to become the managers of our own life. This idea fueled the Human Genome Project, meant to grant human beings access to their own "blueprint," as HGP director Francis Collins phrased it. Paradoxically, however, the HGP undermined its own conceptual starting point by demonstrating, once and for all (so it seems), that genetic determinism is untenable, indeed: that genetic determinism is "dead." At the same time, it is "undead" because, notwithstanding the emphasis on complexity that dominates the various forms of post-genomics research, the language and logic of genetic determinism keeps recurring in contemporary discourse, both in the public and in the scholarly domain.