To date, the meanings of cloning have largely been constituted through the
construction of imagined futures for and about humans across the sciences, medicine,
science fiction, journalism, and bioethics (Hartouni 1993). In my dissertation, I reframe
questions about the meanings of cloning by focusing on the use of nuclear transfer with
nonhuman species and conducting an empirical study of actual, present day cloning
practices. Rather than consider “cloning in general,” the project is to examine the
relationships, knowledges, and management strategies being deployed in particular
endeavors to clone animals of endangered species. Drawing upon post-humanist
theoretical interventions, I consider how these assemblages are constitutive of multi-
situated and heterogeneous humans and nonhumans. Here, animals are not positioned as
mirrors to a universal human condition. Rather, drawing on the work of science studies
scholars Donna Haraway (1991; 2003), Bruno Latour (1993; 1999), Karen Barad ([1998]
1999), and Charis Thompson (1996; 1999; 2002b; 2002a; In preparation), the “agencies”
(Barad [1998] 1999) made possible by assemblages of humans and nonhumans around
nuclear transfer are the sight of analytic inquiry.
[Overhead 1: Image of Dolly in Time Magazine.] I start with an image of cloning
that is quite familiar and exemplifies one of the typical ways in which nuclear transfer
has been constituted to date. This image is from the cover of Time Magazine, published
shortly after the birth of Dolly the Sheep. We see two identical animal’s faces converge
into a singular stare that goes straight into our, the viewer’s eyes. It is as if the viewer is
holding up a mirror that reflects what “we” may figuratively look like in the future. Here
clones are not only mirror images of each other, as these two identical sheep apparently
are, but are also mirrors through which we can see our potential selves. Drawing upon
psychoanalytic theories about the mirror stage, these images make cloned animals into an
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Convention