Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales

Jean Foyer

Il était une fois la bio-révolution

  • Jean Foyer,
    Presses Universitaires de France, coll. "Partage du savoir", mars 2010


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    Once upon a time bio-revolution
    The maize belonging to the Zapotek Indians from the Mexican mountains has been ‘contaminated’ by the presence of escaped transgenes from biotechnical laboratories in North America. This unexpected splicing is much more than a simple question of health and safety or an environmental issue; it is an incredible shock in terms of the different ways to conceive agriculture, nutrition, property, knowledge and even life. Genetically modified maize, the featured product of biotechnical agriculture represents indeed a radical redefinition of the living, at a time when the troubled notion of biodiversity emerges as a new way to define nature. It also embodies the hyper modernist dream of an alliance between science and technology at the service of an all powerful global market while the world’s current ecological crisis puts into perspective the limits of human control over the environment and the necessity to rethink the link between nature and culture. Finally, we could even ask whether this micro-drama currently being staged in the Mexican mountains does not mirror conflicts a great deal more fundamental in terms of the redefinition of our modern age, overturned and upset by the process of globalisation.



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