Where is the genomic person? biolegal platforms, boundaries, unmoored persons

• In Event: Personhood, Law, and Relationality Amidst the New Biosciences I

Abstract

Genomic sequencing technologies have seen forms of molecularization and datafication emerge in which the body is unbound from biology and exists simultaneously in different formats and locations around the globe. In this paper, I look at constructions of personhood contained in the biolegal platforms that govern this data. I draw on ethnographic research on genomics in the UK and Australia, including my experience co-authoring legal case comments, to examine how the conjugation of law and life sciences is changing what we call “body”. This conjugation has given way to new concerns surrounding privacy, autonomy, and ownership. I examine how biolegal platforms seek to mitigate these concerns while making meaningful genomic data. Building on Combrosio and Keating’s articulation of ‘biomedical platforms’ – assemblages of experts, standards, protocols and programmes that allow for the instrumentalisation of medical knowledge – I demonstrate that law is increasingly becoming part of the bench in dry biology. I show how these platforms (1) contain techniques of hiding and making visible, (2) are built on infrastructures and data-exchanges that store and move data, and strip identity from genomic persons, and (3) contain new assumptions about personhood. I suggest that asking where the genomic person is provides insights into how personhood is imagined and constructed today.

Author

• Samuel Taylor-Alexander, Monash University