A General Rhetoric for the Life of the Living: Deconstruction, Genetics, and Rhetoric in the Life Sciences

Abstract

This essay utilizes the newly translated seminar by Jacques Derrida, Life Death, to formulate a theory of rhetoric linking genetic modifications and larger issues of social and environmental justice. The essay aims to demonstrate one avenue for integrating Life Death within the greater landscape of new materialist rhetorical theory as well as within the rhetoric of science. To do so, it examines the genetic impacts of lead poisoning in marginalized communities to posit how rhetoric links together research in the life sciences and humanities to explain the relationship between genetic alterations and structural discrimination.