Postmodern Encounters: Donna Haraway & GM Foods

Genetically modified food is a world-wide issue of public concern. The reason for escalating panic is obvious. GM food messes up the purity of natural divisions. To stick a fish gene in a tomato violates the boundaries between species. And, according to some, it is a fatal step towards the eugenic engineering of humans that will produce a hybrid Frankenstein monster.

This book dissects the genetic debate, from the Flavr Savr tomato to the cancer-programmed lab rat, Oncomouse. It asks the difficult questions, taking us beyond the frozen postures of enthusiasm and protest, into the ambiguous and unsettling terrain of cyborg hybrids, the spliced new beings who erase the pre-existing categories of human and non-human. This is a journey of far-ranging controversy, from Greenpeace and Monsanto to genetics, hypercapitalism, World Wide Webs and the dawning of the 21st-century FemaleMan.