Performing DNA Spacing: Omogeneia and Dissonant Genealogies

Abstract

In 2023, Dr. Eftihia Mihelakis and Dr. Lucille Toth discovered through a DNA test that the geographical and national spaces to which they thought they belonged did not actually match the story told by their DNA results. L. would be 72% Spanish, when she thought she had deep roots in Continental Europe (Hungary), and E. is 66% Eastern Mediterranean, but with significant roots in Northern Africa, Russia, and Norway. She was raised to believe she only had Greek roots. This dissonance between biodata and multi-generational family fantasies, between monocultural expectations and bio-mediated bodies who form part of a global pool of human DNA, made possible a (re)examination of identity.

Their performance-based flash talk combines Greek and Hungarian folk dances and posthumanist feminism (Braidotti, 2018). Examining their identity as bioliving matter, one that is constantly interacting with known and unknown environments, their dance-talk produces multiple ecologies of belonging that trouble the idea of loyalty and familiarity with/to the European/Continental/Mediterranean space. These preliminary findings form an affective postanthropocentric form of identification that troubles the tensions between “technophilic” (Braidotti, 2002) desires to belong, to matter, and their (dis)loyalty to phallic and paternal (humanistic) genealogies.