Conclusion: Levels of Life in the Novel

In the first part of this conclusion to the book, I identify a set of levels through which to describe the novel’s multifaceted engagement of genetic life. I provide a systematic overview of the aesthetic and discursive phenomena I have observed in my readings and produce a framework for the study of the novel’s engagement with genetics more generally. In the second part, I return to my underlying argument. Genetics has provoked an ongoing renegotiation of cultural and socio-political life. This study makes available for the first time the complexity of the novel’s contribution to this renegotiation. The contemporary novel has been profoundly shaped by the discursive remodelling of life through genetics. In its turn, the novel has also critically and aesthetically articulated remarkably nuanced cultural perceptions and critiques of genetic science, thus continuing a history of literary investigations of scientific conceptions of life beginning with the Romantic debates about idealist and materialist notions of vitality. The novel’s ingrained focus on life is reconfigured through its exploration of a materialist genetic understanding of life itself. Its complex and dynamic treatment of genetic paradigms helps us rethink literature and culture, not just on the molecular but on all levels of life.