The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon

Dorothy Nelkin and M. Susan Lindee's book is a study of the cultural meanings surrounding DNA and the gene in popular culture today. The book is a critique of genetic essentialism, the tendency since the 1980s and 1990s to attribute personal traits to biological rather than social or environmental determinism. Humans become reduced down to their genes, their DNA molecules. Despite much interdeterminacy and complexity in genetic science about exactly how genes interact with environment in complex ways to express certain traits, the public has simplified the gene to a causal, determinist explanation, often supported by scientists' own popularizing rhetoric to generate funding support for large projects such as the Human Genome Project, and this popular understanding feeds back into scientists' own motivations for pursuing certain avenues of research. Narratives of genetic determinism build upon historical understandings of the importance of blood for kinship ties, and current discourse is very similar to early twentieth century eugenics discourse, which focused on the similarly constructed "germplasm." The gene is seen as a computer program coded with our instructions, as a sacred text which will reveal the secrets of human existence, and as a surrogate for the soul, both the repository of human identity and the guarantor of immortality. The gene powerfully reinforces traditional notions of family in an era when the nuclear family seems under attack; genetic kinship makes adoption appear unnatural and problematic. Genes are also seen to be the root of both genius and criminality; by redirecting moral responsibility to genes, we absolve or mitigate individuals of guilt in a society where individual free will is held responsible. However such relocating of blame, while absolving parents of bad parenting, puts new moral pressures on parents not to reproduce in order to not pass on bad genes, seen as having social costs for a taxpayer society.  Genetic essentialism has been used both to positive and negative effect by various marginalized groups, including feminists, African-Americans, and homosexuals, arguing that their innate differences either make them superior or give them a claim to special protection and equal civil rights. But essentialism is a double-edged sword, for it also can be used by neo-Nazis and conservative supporters of eugenics to limit reproduction for such marginalized groups. Genetic essentialism can create a new class of the genetic disadvantaged, pressured by society not to procreate. Thus the icon of the gene has all sorts of political, moral, and legal implications being played out in current society: who should have custody of an adopted child, whether criminals or job applicants should be screened, whether genetic dispositions should be used to calculate insurance premiums, the rights of the disabled to have children. Nelkin and Lindee foresee a frightening future whereby voluntary eugenics, based on the public social understanding of genetic essentialism, forces people to make reproductive choices rather than any state policy. They also see that genetic essentialism favors a fatalistic view of social problems, advocating inaction with regard to social welfare and education reform (why bother to help dumb kids?), and promoting racialized attitudes towards inner city welfare mothers breeding indiscriminately on taxpayer money. The gene has become the supergene, explaining everything in the human condition.