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This chapter applies tenets of a critical curiosity to new technical practices. It questions the limits of a theoretical curiosity in the paradigms of technosciences of genomics and bioinformatics. These new research programs challenge modernist boundaries between human and non-human life-forms. Genomics tests the experimental limits of human embodiment. As a technical system it also brings into relief the question of the limits or limitlessness of theoretical curiosity in contemporary technoculture. This chapter contextualizes the question of limits to theoretical practice in a critique of a prevailing rhetoric of the "posthuman." It provides a profile of the technical apparatus now being developed that extend the power of the human. The genomic paradigm is emphasized as a way of rewriting the codes of biological life. This chapter assays the genetic revolution within an anthropological appreciation of the salience of technics within human cultural organization and practice. The new genomic and bioinformatic models compel a shift away from public sector and democratic polities in favor of a technical sovereignty over life. I advance a critical, "zoographic" practice that addresses the extensions and changes in the relation of the body to the world and the nature of experience. It reviews germ-line and somatic cell developments in genetics and reproductive technologies affording class-marked bodies, health, and longevity. This chapter asserts that the technical or technics has always been the means by humans as tool users extend their physical, emotional, and intellectual capacities.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-2117-3_6

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