We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
La edad molecular: reimaginando la vejez desde laboratorios de experimentación en telómeros.
- Authors
Lasunción Mejía, Sara; Arregui, Aníbal G.
- Abstract
The process known as "cellular ageing" manifests itself in the shortening of the ends of chromosomes, known as telomeres. In recent decades, the possibility of genetic manipulation to preserve telomere length has enabled a new perception of ageing as a malleable and postponable process. Through an ethnography of telomere laboratories and their popularised scientific environment, we trace the emergence of a "molecular biopolitics" (Rose, 2007) that destabilises the idea of a linear, "chronological" age. In its place, a "biological" age emerges, which, being relative to the length and rate of telomere shortening, can be measured and manipulated at the micrometric level. Here we describe how the molecular manipulation of age is deployed alongside an intrinsic pathologisation of old age. As a consequence, biomedical episteme and practice transitions from the goal of "curing" a disease to that of optimising cellular physiology to slow ageing. The imprint of time on the body is no longer understood as a "natural" process, but is reimagined as a "technical failure", accidental and correctable.
- Publication
Quaderns de l'Institut Català d'Antropologia, 2022, Vol 38, Issue 2, p369
- ISSN
0211-5557
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.56247/qua.389