How Genetic Technology Altered Gender Roles, Care-giving, Family Structures, and the Artworld

357 Pages·2016·11.57 MB·English

by  Heather E. Dunn

Maine State Library
Maine State Documents
Academic Research and Dissertations Special Collections
4-2013
Forty Years of Change: How Genetic Technology
Altered Gender Roles, Care-giving, Family
Structures, and the Artworld
Heather E. Dunn
IDSVA
Follow this and additional works at:http://digitalmaine.com/academic
Recommended Citation
Dunn, Heather E., "Forty Years of Change: How Genetic Technology Altered Gender Roles, Care-giving, Family Structures, and the
Artworld" (2013).Academic Research and Dissertations.Book 5.
http://digitalmaine.com/academic/5
This Text is brought to you for free and open access by the Special Collections at Maine State Documents. It has been accepted for inclusion in
Academic Research and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Maine State Documents. For more information, please contact
[email protected].
FORTY YEARS OF CHANGE: HOW GENETIC TECHNOLOGY ALTERED
GENDER ROLES, CARE-GIVING, FAMILY STRUCTURES, AND THE
ARTWORLD

Heather E. Dunn

Submitted to the faculty of The Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy

April, 2013
i
Accepted by the faculty of the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in
partial fulfillment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Doctoral Committee

________________________
Dissertation Director
Michael Stone-Richards, PhD

________________________
George Smith, PhD

________________________
Simonetta Moro, PhD

ii
April 20, 2013

© 2013
Heather E. Dunn

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

iii
The prenatal life of the child is a pure natural association, a flowing toward each
other, a bodily reciprocity; and the life horizon of the developing being appears
uniquely inscribed, and yet also not inscribed, in that of the being that carries it. –
Martin Buber1

I dedicate this dissertation to my loving husband, Michael Alpiner, our beautiful
daughter Emma Grace Alpiner and my father, John J. Dunn.

1 Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 76.
iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMTS

I would like to thank my husband and daughter, as well as my loving and
supportive parents for their help and encouragement in this undertaking. Without
my family’s understanding and assistance this dissertation would not have come to
fruition. I would also like to thank George Smith for letting me be a part of his
vision that has become IDSVA. His guidance and moral support over the last six
years has deeply impacted my life and changed it for the better. Additionally, my
advisor Michael Stone-Richards has been indispensable. His knowledge and kind-
hearted spirit have placed me on a new and hopefully long path of future
enlightenment within my life-world, and for that I am forever grateful. I would
also like to thank my committee for their suggestions and their time, as well as my
fellow classmates, and Amy Curtis, the woman who keeps everything running at
IDSVA.

v
ABSTRACT

HEATHER E. DUNN

FORTY YEARS OF CHANGE: HOW GENETIC TECHNOLOGY ALTERED
GENDER ROLES, CARE-GIVING, FAMILY STRUCTURES, AND THE
ARTWORLD

In the span of the last forty years, genetic advancements have remapped humans’
understanding of the body, and the interaction between the self and the Other. This
has helped to continually alter humans’ understanding of various sociocultural
environments. Within this dissertation, four chapters are organized by decade to
allow for an in-depth analysis of one genetic advancement per decade, the related
changing nuclear family structure, gender roles, and care-giving, as well as
reflecting upon how these advancements and changes are found in visual arts.
Each chapter is further structured through the use of Edmund Husserls’ concept of
the life-world, Michel Foucault’s argument of the increasing presences of
biopolitical power, and Günther Anders theories about technological agency. In
each chapter, an emphasis is placed on the argument that these methods of analysis
should be viewed as interconnected and relevant to the past and the present, as well
as, to the future.

vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1

Chapter One – IVF, Mary Kelly, Post-Partum Document & the 1970s

Introduction 4

Part One – The Relation of Husserl’s Life-World to Kelly’s Post-Partum
Document and IVF in the 1970s 5

Part Two – The Second-Wave in Light of Feminism and Mary Kelly’s
Post-Partum Document in the 1970s and The Relation of
Foucault’s Power Structures 57

Part Three – Günther Anders, Social Changes & Genetic Discourse of
the 1970s 83

Chapter Two – The Human Genome, Cleve Jones, the NAMES Project
AIDS Memorial Quilt, & the 1980s

Introduction 108

Part One – The Life-world of Cleve Jones’ NAME Project AIDS Memorial
Quilt and Human Genome Research in the 1980s 110

Part Two – Power Structures, Gender Performativity, and Cleve Jones’ the
NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt in the 1980s 144

Part Three – Günther Anders, Human Genome, HIV/AIDS, & the Family
Structure in the 1980s 176

vii
Chapter Three – Genetic Engineering, Patricia Piccinini, The Mutant
Genome Project & the 1990s

Introduction 197

Part One – The Life-world, Patricia Piccinini’s The Mutant Genome Project,
and Genetic Engineering in the 1990s 200

Part Two – The Relation of Power Structures to Genetic Engineering Society
& the 1990s 234

Part Three – Technological Agency, Patricia Piccinini’s The Mutant Genome
Project and Genetic Engineering in the 1990s 255

Chapter Four – Microarray Technology, Eduardo Kac, Natural History of
the Enigma, and a new century

Introduction 271

Part One – The Customization of Truth and the Life-world, and Eduardo
Kac’s Natural History of the Enigma 276

Part Two – The Growing Control of Biopolitical Power Over the Individual
Body 292

Part Three - Günther Anders, Science, Computer Technology, &
Individualization 315

Conclusion 326

Appendix: Author’s Note 330

Bibliography 332

viii
Introduction

From the commencement of this dissertation, the goal was to examine how,
over the past forty years, genetic advance-ments have changed the nuclear family
structure, gender roles, and care-giving, and how these changes are reflected in
visual arts. Various methods of research and organization were utilized to
accomplish this; specifically, the dissertation has been divided into four chapters to
examine the four sequential decades beginning with the 1970s. Within each
chapter, one genetic advancement and one piece of artwork were chosen to discuss
various changes that occurred within the decade in relation to the nuclear family
structure, gender roles, and care-giving. Furthermore, each chapter followed the
same theoretical pattern that was organized by subdividing the chapters into three
sections. In part one, Edmund Husserl’s concept of the life-world is examined; in
part two Michel Foucault’s theory of biopolitics is analyzed, and in part three,
Günther Anders’ argument that tech-nology has its own agency is explored. While
there are three distinct sections to each chapter, it was shown how each of these
theories is interconnected. In the beginning of the dissertation, it is Husserl’s life-
world that knits the theories, technology, and artwork together, specifically, Julia
Kristeva’s pre-linguistic argument with Mary Kelly’s Post Partum Document, and
the advancements in IVF. Through these components, the argument is made that
the family structure, gender roles, and care-giving are situated in a life-world that is
continually changing due to shifting sociocultural changes that are often related to
technology. The second chapter focuses on the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the
nineteen eighties and the AIDS Memorial Quilt in relation to the mapping of the
1