Technologies of genetic modification are increasingly being used or considered to control populations of disease-bearing mosquitoes. This article draws on ethnographic material and science fiction to explore affective encounters between people and new genetically engineered organisms which draw upon imagery and discourses of betrayal. Describing how the organism comes into being with and as the biblical figure of Judas Iscariot, the making and knowing of bodies is shown as much affective as material, as rooted in darkness, intimacy and violence as in the clean and clinical spaces of laboratory research. The transgenic version of Aedes aegypti is presented as one in a network of uncanny doubles, illustrating how the uses of unsettling insect imagery to explore elements of human sexuality also works in reverse, as the human figure of Judas emerges as a way for people to think through insect sexuality and articulate social meanings for the new kind of creature in their midst. Working in the interstices of ethnographic data and science fiction, convergences between the insect and human figure are drawn out to make the case for a nuanced attentiveness to negative affect in the implementation of novel regimes of vector control.
Anne V. O'Connor (Tue,) studied this question.