Deconstructing the Genome

Yet another surprise about Derrida, the recently deceased, best-known and most difficult to comprehend philosopher of postmodernism. Jacques Derrida might be the only person who could add complexity to genomics, already the most intricate and sweeping scientific field in history. So he did. He's bequeathed $10 million to fund Yale Systems Biology Institute. I would pay money to listen to the spin that is given to this turn of events by the thousands of Derridian scholars, many of whom have been deeply skeptical of the entire field of genomics and in particular of its inherent (and obvious) commitment to naturalism. But I don't have to, because the spin has begun:

"Who says no one but scientists and engineers can contribute to the progress of systems biology?" said Carlos Jacobin, professor of comparative literature and the new director of the Derrida Center. "This privileges their role in the academy and suppresses diversity. We think linguists, critics, and philosophers deserve equal status with molecular biologists and software programmers in this grand collaboration."

Exactly. Want more? Genomics "... as everyone knows, has failed to progress because of its hidebound traditions, myopic vision, and obsession with empirical data." Yup, exactly. That's it.

I can't help hearkening back to a time when a physicist revealed in the now-defunct literary mag Lingua Franca that he had persuaded a post modern journal to publish his fake article criticizing physics in the "language of postmodernism."

The guy with the most illuminating perspective on this incredible turn of events in postmodernism was Yale's president C. Richard Levine, whose sole comment on the donation was "I had no idea Derrida had this kind of money, but we're happy to take it."

UPDATE: Put that under erasure: our comment reveals that this is actually an April fools joke. Well, I bought it.