Under Surveillance: Genetic Privacy in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy

摘要

This paper provides the first study of the depiction of genetic privacy in MargaretAtwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, which comprises the novels Oryx and Crake (2003),The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013). The concept of genetic privacyresponds to the growing volumes of individual genetic data at risk of public exposuretoday and designates a recent informational turn in thinking about the boundaries ofprivate and public spheres. Atwood’s trilogy registers this shift in conceptions ofprivacy from the concealment of information to the control of the use of personal data.In the novels’ pervasive surveillance culture, lacking control over genetic informationlimits individual agency and shows that when privacy is threatened, a fundamentalconcept of modernity is at stake. Besides representing a new development in Atwood’slong-standing concern with the politics of privacy, the trilogy’s exploration of geneticprivacy highlights that the novel continues to be a central and socially relevant site forthe discussion of the private.