Against Biocentrism: Blood, Adoption, and Diasporic Writing

This essay explores the continued circulation of modern metaphors of blood and blood-lines in diasporic literature and criticism. Drawing upon recent research into representations of adoption, it approaches diasporic thought through the critical lens of adoption studies in order to expose and question the problematic biocentric rendering of diasporic personhood which continues to keep aligned notions of cultural provenance with the alleged facticity of biogenetic origin. Beginning with the critique of blood mounted in the work of the mixed-race Canadian writer Lawrence Hill, it considers the tendency towards biocentrism which endangers the writing of Zadie Smith and Jane Jeong Trenka, before exploring Jackie Kay’s attempt, itself not without problems, to conceive of biogenetic personhood beyond biocentrism, so that the dangerous “language of blood” is voided once and for all.