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In French DNA, anthropologist Paul Rabinow makes the case that the "basic understanding and practices of `bare life' have been altered" by the revolution in genetics. Seen as essential, irreducible, and fundamental, DNA can stand in for the whole person (or even culture) and is subject to various kinds of "spiritual identification." Is there, for instance, such a thing as French DNA? The question, he asserts, is still open, and it defies existing systems of understanding. The resulting "purgatorial space," as Rabinow puts it, remains to be filled. He points to the program of a French research institute, the Center
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