Paper short abstract:

The embodied figure of Anthropos as well as quasi-human living entities appear to have become the materialization of various biotechnological utopias.Using concepts of utopia and fractal embodiments as time-space continua, the paper analyzes networks and relations in the biochemical laboratory.

Paper long abstract:

The embodied figure of Anthropos as well as quasi-human living entities and embodiments appear to have become the materialization of various biotechnological utopias. These utopias are embodied within multiple realities in which potential futures redesign "life-as-it-could-be". The paper is based on the ethnographic study I conducted in a biochemical laboratory focusing on DNA repair and recombination in the Czech Republic between 2017 and 2019. DNA recombination is understood here as the exchange of DNA strands to produce and design new nucleotide sequence arrangements to heal or enhance future bodies. Using concepts of utopia and fractal embodiments as a specific kind of time-space continua, I would like to analyze networks and relations in the laboratory. The bodies of scientists themselves and their visions of future life as well as their desire for healthy/immortal bodies will be analyzed. Specifically, the paper focuses on technologies that deal with "bioinformatics life models", "immortal cell lines", "genes as tools", and "edited DNA sequences". The views, emotions, and attitudes of scientists and laboratory technicians are also analyzed and presented with special regard for the symmetry (nonlinearity) of relations and embodied entities. These could be independent complexities and fractalities (Scott), or bodies/persons that are neither singular nor plural (Haraway, Strathern), or potential, becoming, virtual bodies without organs (Deleuze&Guattari). The paper concentrates mainly on the following questions: How are issues of future life, embodiments, and biotechnological forms of life in the lab tackled? How are biotechnologized utopias designed?