“One Unique You”

Abstract

AbstractStarting with the apparatus of DNA testing that produces and reifies ethnoracial differences and identities, this article articulates two layers of analysis. The larger implications of this analysis are to be understood in the articulation between these two layers. The first layer regards the neocolonial construction of an ethnosubject anchored in the racialization of DNA. This racialization consists of two steps. First, race is naturalized and biologized anew through the technological procedure of DNA decoding and data comparison. Second, race is reculturalized through its substitution with ethnicity. This step enables the neutralization of the politically antiliberal connotations of the rebiologization of race. The second layer of analysis connects this rebiologization of race to neocolonial processes of value extraction and biopolitical techniques of surveillance. The implications of these developments are attended to by interrogating the directions taken by DNA datafication in terms of both surveying and surveilling. At center stage is the question of the modulation of the individual's access—to countries and services—enabled by their datafication. Thus, the question of access is the question of how boundaries are drawn, who draws them, and how porous they are depending on the characteristics of the individual's biological data.