STSS in Writing

In addition to its influence on my dissertation project, my study of STSS has impacted writing projects that I have completed throughout my time at the University of Washington. These projects include investigations into the ethics of engaging with visual content online, and into groups of people who experiment on their own bodies, aka biohackers. Below, I offer a brief description of each of these projects.

Ethics of Looking

One of the first projects I completed in the broad field of STSS dealt with the ethics of viewing and circulating violent imagery online. Specifically, I analyzed Emma Sulkowitz’s performance art piece “Ceci n’est pas un viol” or “this is not a rape” to argue that when viewers engage with online texts we have the potential to expand their reach and create real-world violence. In this paper I argued that ethical engagement with online texts often means a refusal to engage, a directive to look away rather than look at. This project integrated scholarship on visual rhetorics with literature on online circulation and engagement to argue that there is no such thing as a neutral consumer of online content.

Biohacking

Over the course of several writing projects, I have investigated communities of biohackers, or individuals who experiment on their own bodies, usually in an effort to improve some particular biological metric or function. I engaged with these communities to ask two specific questions: one, how is science rhetorically constructed within these do-it-yourself communities, and how do those constructions enable potentially dangerous practices; and, two, when individuals separate themselves from the mainstream of science, as biohackers do, who do they choose to believe are experts?

In answering the first question, I investigated communities of biohackers who engage in DIY genetic experimentation, people who set out to alter their own DNA or the DNA of test subjects. I found that many of these experimenters begin with treating the institutions of science as paragons of innovation, claiming that genetic technologies like CRISPR are revolutionary and should be expanded upon. However, these biohackers then diverge from the scientific mainstream to claim that these technologies should not be “gatekept” by institutions like the FDA but instead they should be made available to anyone who might want to use them. Their claim is that scientific and medical innovation should not be restricted to traditional laboratory spaces that are subject to regulation and therefore move quickly when it comes to developing things like medical treatments. Instead, these biohackers argue that massive democratization of technologies like CRISPR will enhance innovation and allow science to develop more rapidly without the restrictions that come with institutionalization.  

To answer the second question, I analyzed the rhetoric of one particular biohacker: Dr. Josiah Zayner. A former NASA engineer and MIT graduate, Zayner has massive social media followings across several platforms, and owns and operates a biotechnology website called The Odin which sells genetic engineering equipment kits for incredibly low prices. Zayner teaches classes about genetic self-engineering and has done many such experiments on himself, documenting them in YouTube series and various news exposes. Because of this, Zayner is often seen by his followers as an expert on biohacking and is invoked as a “good scientist” who sees the value of innovation outside of institutions. Zayner is thus uniquely positioned as an expert who endorses science but not its instructions or regulations. This allows his followers to accept his advice on how to do things like genetic engineering while maintaining their anti-establishment ideologies and rejection of the scientific mainstream.