genetic engineering

Jay Clayton on Literature & Science

It just so happens that next week the Journal of Narrative Theory (JNT) at Eastern Michigan will be hosting a dialogue on… exactly what I’m interested in learning more about right now. The JNT has invited Jay Clayton of Vanderbilt and Laura Otis of Emory to come speak “about cognitive science, genetics, and the literary imagination.” I’m really looking forward to all of the events: the colloquium on Tuesday, in which students and faculty will discuss some articles by the invited speakers, the dialogue itself on Thursday, and the opportunity to have coffee with the speakers the afternoon of the dialogue. In preparation for the events, particularly the colloquium, I’m reading through the articles provided by the JNT, and I’ll be writing about these articles (and some others, if I have time) on this blog, beginning with…


Jay Clayton’s “The Ridicule of Time: Science Fiction, Bioethics, and the Posthuman” from last summer’s American Literary History. In the article, he makes the case for including literary voices in discussions of the ethics of biotechnology.

Clayton begins by saying that science fiction has had “a pervasive but unexamined influence on” bioethics (318). Most people assume “that SF warns against the consequences of biotechnology,” when in fact it is “overwhelmingly positive about the possibility of transforming the human” (319). He admits that the most famous SF novels, and films as well, are dystopian, like “Brave New World and Oryx and Crake” (319), and that the SF work that is optimistic about the posthuman falls largely within the “90 or 95 percent of SF production” that “is strictly perishable” (Suvin, qtd. 319). However, from a public policy standpoint, this mass of “popular, ‘low,’ or plebian” (Suvin, qtd. 319) fiction is important, because it represents “a significant strand in our culture” (319), which ought not to be overlooked.

Science fiction responds to the concerns of the age in which it is written, whether it be eugenics, the Cold War, racism, etc., as Clayton amply demonstrates. Thus, we have developed “a kind of awareness we might call science-fictionality, a mode of response that frames and tests experiences as if they were aspects of a work of science fiction” (Cscicsery-Ronay qtd. 319-20). As SF possibilities linger in our collective cultural imagination, SF concepts become easy rhetorical devices for both sides of the futurism debate (if we can boil it down to just two sides).

spacevikingOn the one hand, “[s]cientific jeremiads,” that is, works of opposition to biotechnological interventions, “attempt to motivate people to act in history—to resist a feared future—by conjuring a ‘novum,’ to use Darko Suvin’s term for a new reality science fiction creates” (335). Such writing also utilizes “metaphors of organicism” (335), what I would call appeals to naturalness, which are, in fact, appeals to the illusion of naturalness. This is especially important in relation to Fukuyama’s claims about what constitutes “human nature” (337). I will no doubt take up the idea of “naturalness” in a later blog post.

The jeremiads also use “performative speech,” or the use of broad proclamations about what “we” are feeling about scientific developments: “something . . . leaves a lingering moral qualm” (Sandel qtd. 335). (I am reminded of the phrase “questions are being raised about,” which allows the writer/commentator/whoever to displace the burden of explaining why the given topic is relevant onto a nonexistent passive subject. Fox News might be the worst abuser of the phrase, but it’s fairly commonplace.) The other rhetorical device is “symbolic oppositions,” the familiar us/them dichotomy that “plainly substitutes symbolic for social analysis” (Bercovitch qtd. 336).

On the other hand, the scientific “encomia,” or works in praise of biotechnological interventions, also use the “same rhetorical elements” (337). Though he refers to a number of works, Clayton does not give any specific examples of how the “rhetorical elements” are used. He does, however, demonstrate “slippage,” in which science-fictional elements are appropriated, unacknowledged, into purportedly non-fiction writing, which “illustrates the kinship these works bear to our culture’s science ﬁction” (338).

“Both jeremiad and the encomia have their uses,” Clayton nearly concludes, “but the latter especially courts the ridicule of time” (338). That is, it’s easy to make predictions and wild extrapolations about what the future may hold and hope that you’re right. More than likely you won’t be, but in the meantime you might get paid to give public lectures. “They trafﬁc in mundane predictions, and their attempts to inspire awe at biotechnology’s wonders sometimes result merely in the feeling of ‘gee whiz'” (338). (Could this be an example of performative speech?)

Clayton ends abruptly with a call to “take up the challenge” of bringing “the analysis of posthumanism to bear on problems with tangible impact on patients, health-care providers, and scientific policy” (339). At the very least, literary scholars should resist the trend of “generalizing glibly about cultural attitudes from a sample size consisting of a few decontextualized novels and ﬁlms” (338), though it’s not clear what else there is for us to do.

Some questions that I have for Dr. Clayton that I might bring up when I see him next week:

Does the optimism in SF about the possibilities of biotechnological intervention say more about the self-selecting group of individuals most interested in SF? How much can we look to that mindset as evidence of more popular optimism about science, particularly when the most popular novels and films seem much more pessimistic?

It seems as though this conversation gets to the heart of the contemporary conversation about the role of the humanities in society. The humanities, the argument goes, need to be doing something for society, rendering some tangible service. Is there a danger to the humanities in making promises about what we have to offer to scientific discussions? Walt Whitman wrote of the sciences that their “facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling,/I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling” (“Song of Myself,” part 23). Are we qualified to make our dwelling in the sciences?

How is the relationship between the literary imagination and the sciences, as you perceive it, similar to or distinct from that relationship as it might be perceived from a position that is primarily reliant on cultural criticism? For example, one might argue from a Marxist perspective that technological advancements have historically benefited and will continue to benefit the capitalist class. Do you see your project as approaching the sciences differently?

How does the relationship between SF and biotechnology translate into discussions about information technology, robotics, global warming, etc.? Do the discourses of other scientific issues have a similarly problematic relationship with science fiction?


For more information about Jay Clayton, you can check out his profile on Vanderbilt’s website, where you will find this delightful picture of him next to what looks like a mural of a tricycle.