Unfamiliar biological futurities : Animals in techno - science

Sarah Franklin’s comprehensive work in feminist science and technology studies is probably well known to most of Humanimalia’s readers, but most certainly not to all. Although much of her research involves the bio-technological use of other animals and the far-reaching cultural consequences and contexts of this kind of animal experimentation, Franklin’s way of approaching human-animal relations is perhaps unfamiliar to most readers. Thus the aim of this brief introduction is to contextualize the scopes and arguments of Franklin’s paper, “Future Mix: Remodelling Biological Futures” (in this volume), into more familiar human-animal studies terms, themes, and ongoing debates. The article itself is an account and an analysis of an art/science/communication school project, initiated and performed by, among others, Franklin herself. Within the project, pupils in a London school were supposed critically to engage with imaginable bio-technological futures concerning, for example, cloned and transgenic animals. The project resulted in an art exhibition in which some students chose to embody — to mimic — Dolly the cloned sheep and to think about the future(s) through her bovine mind and words.