Writing of recent reconceptualizations of the informational capacities of DNA, Natasha Myers points out that
cells make use of their DNA as a tissue that not only remembers their evolutionary history but also records ongoing life experiences. No longer a deterministic code, the genome can be seen as a materialized archive of memories left behind in the wake of cells doing life (p235–236; emphasis in original).
This claim (which is well elaborated in analyses of genetics and genomics in the biopolitical literature, and especially in New Genetics and Society) already defies any dogma that genes are mere blueprints of life. Instead, they are smart, excitable, biotechnologies that coarticulate matter in myriad ways. Now, social scientists, philosophers, and ethicists are beginning to address the emerging “omics,” or the specialized offshoots that proffer the insights and technologies of genomics. These include metabalomics, incidentalomics, vaccinomics, nutrigenomics, pharmacogenomics, metagenomics, transcriptomics, and, as the topic of Myers’ Rendering Life Molecular: Models, Modelers, and Excitable Matter, proteomics.
Myers’ book is divided into three parts: “Laboratory Entanglements”, “Ontics and Epistemics”, and “Forms of Life,” which detail the performative-practical, onto-epistemological, and affective-mimetic aspects of protein crystallography respectively by articulating various meanings of the term “rendering.” A rich description of ethnographic data is complemented in the book with a thorough engagement with literatures in science studies, and on performativity, performance, and affect. Rendering Life Molecular argues that protein crystallography (i.e., the study of the molecular forms of proteins) renders life biopolitical in various significant ways.
This timely work analyzes the performative, kinaesthetic model-making of protein crystallographers, empirically exploring how “the wily phenomena they try to pin down continually escape and evade attempts to extract clean, clear data” (p72). Myers therefore advances a challenging inquiry into how proteins defy the mechanizing fetish of science. At the same time, she elaborates how rendering a protein molecule is also a rendering of an embodied, subject-scientist: “it is not so much the phenomena that are caught in the apparatus. Rather, it is the scientists who are caught” (p72). For example, in Chapter 5, “Remodeling Objectivity”, Myers borrows terminology from Karen Barad and Evelyn Fox Keller to detail how protein crystallographers deal with the epistemic uncertainties portended by the “feeling for the molecule” that they cultivate in the making of models, and which is inseparable from scientific and other cultural values and norms. Simultaneously, the proteins are not merely patiently awaiting discovery; protein matters are lively and dynamic. They defy the immutability of models, which are therefore always uncertain representations, even as they are the only means by which bioscience can understand and describe proteins. These entanglements render ontological indeterminacies as much as they render scientifically or clinically useful protein models. As such, proteins are situated inventions. This begs ethical questions of crystallographers.
In other words, using remarkably rich and intimate empirical research, Rendering Life Molecular extends the theoretical offerings of scholars such as Karen Barad, Astrid Schrader, Donna Haraway, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Bruno Latour, Sarah Franklin, and many others. It is essential reading for those interested in biopolitics, bioethics, science studies, and genetics, genomics, and the new omics. Although Rendering Life Molecular is a highly accomplished book, I would be very excited by an extended work by Myers on the onto-epistemology of prions, which are strange, nonliving (although this is debated) infective proteins thought to cause, for example, “mad cow disease.” With Rendering Life Molecular as an excellent start, there is indeed much more work that can be done to elaborate protein-being.