Sesame is a plant of Asian origin, today widely spread over the Middle East, where it is used to prepare fabulous sweets such as helwa, or doughnuts covered with the characteristic little white seeds.

from 'Impossible interviews' edizioni Re Nudo, 2000

Fabrice Olivier Dubosc
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Sesame is a plant of Asian origin, today widely spread over the Middle East, where it is used to prepare fabulous sweets such as helwa, or doughnuts covered with the characteristic little white seeds. However globally, the seed caters for a smaller market segment and has so far avoided the hungry attention of the agroindustrial sector. As far as we know sesame has not yet been cloned or genetically manipulated. It is therefore fully qualified to answer a few questions on biotechnology.

A tricky question: have you been manipulated yet?

It's a matter of months...at the most of a few years... I am not on top of the list of priorities. I do not belong to one of those twenty species providing 90% of human feeding. And they have not any outstanding pharmacological property. The mapping of the genome and the subsequent intervention of genetic manipulation are, from a conceptual point of view, of a disheartening banality... The nucleotides involved are only four, an alphabet of four letters, but which can build infinite sequences. These sequences in turn furnish all the information needed for the construction of uncountable strange, wonderful, yet-to-be-discovered proteins and enzymes. Today humankind has discovered a series of winning cards, the natural codes for the medicines of the future, because Nature has taken 3 billions years of experiments on the field to create these sequences, a 'green gold' whetting the craving of many.

So you think the genome is the individual 'number', the specific sequence of each living organism?

The Latin word for 'species' was also species, which meant the 'appearance", the 'permanence' of the visible form which made identification possible. The older Sanskrit root meant to spy. The idea of 'species' evokes thus the persistence of visible forms and also the mystery of its relationship with what cannot be spied, the invisible link from one generation to the other. But of course, as you say, no other species holds my same combination – or it would also be a sesame seed. Moreover - unless they are clones - no two seeds are alike.

But with DNA manipulation the idea of species seems obsolete whereas the concept of 'information' gains first rank...

Yes, but even a child knows that the 'numbers' of the genome are only a description. The problem is not number in itself but your attitude towards number. For the ancient Greeks numbers were sacred, and also for the Chinese, the Maya, the Celts, each number represented a specific, unchangeable quality. Today, four hundred years after Descartes, you still manage to think that quality is the result of arithmetical sum of information. Only adopting a mechanistic model you can think that a genetic 'cut and paste' give a positive sum that would not alter the whole. Isn't this an incredibly poor conceptual model? When Nature took all that time, all those millennia of interactions to evolve an ever wider range of organisms flexible enough o adapt to the environment and solid enough to build complex ecosystems...So that both the DNA and the species have been building blocks of this evolutionary stability...

So you are a conservative?

Put it this way: even the image of God evolves, but this requires thousands of years...

What the heck has God to do with it?

One of the best definitions of the divine is in the Old Testament: 'I am that I am'. In all cultures the gods have very definite 'personalities'. We seeds could also say 'we are that we are'. That's what the genome is, the quality of what is just what it is, not a sort of bar code, to be re-written according to market trends. To describe quality as quantity does not grant anyone the right to blindly tamper with the nature of things, because right depends on a moral code, therefore also on the evolution of collective 'feeling' and not simply on what is technically possible and economically tempting. But here we touch on two very difficult problems for technoscientific Rule; the problem of quality and the problem of self-limitation.

I got it. You are not keen on manipulation.

No, you didn't get it. It is not that I am not keen. It is potentially the worst catastrophe in human history. Even human behavior is nowadays often described as pre-determined by genetic information. One of the risks involved in such description is in belittling the very margins of freedom and self-determination that make humankind so special. Another risk lies in forgetting that humankind has always defined itself through the confrontation with limitation – and first of all with the limitations imposed by Nature. But all the traditions concord in saying that superhomism is a risky business, especially if you play down its dangers...

The cosmogony myths of all cultures describe the passage from undifferentiation to a specifically human order. These myths express sheer horror for the absolute identity of two beings. On the other hand, biodiversity, in its infinite variety, corresponds to a deep psychic need. Whereas cloning goes towards a return to that which is identical, undifferentiated, twin-like. In doing away with the 'genetic lottery' – with the casual recombination of genetic information – man is giving shape to one of his worse nightmares, sinking back into collective uniformity. Or into totalitarian 'programmed differentiation'. The nakedness of the victims of torture, and the uniform of the torturer have both the same function: destroying symbolic opportunities to seek meaning and passion in creative conflict and diversity. The only legitimate code is the code of power. Nowadays in the place of uniforms you have 'personalized products'.

But how can you judge with the same measure human cloning and the products of agroindustry? Shouldn't we make a distinction?

If nature and man are interpreted according to market laws, the mere market of well being will end up taking the place of any cultural construction of meaning.

The result will be the reduction of humanity to a programmable bio-psychological well- adjusted consumer of goods. It's the known tale of social engineering and profiteering madness. I am not sure the roots of this story are so rational, are you? Though some humans keep theorizing on the rationality of it all! Francis Fukuyama, who a few years ago was talking about the 'end of history' today writes that 'biotechnology can give us the tools needed to fulfill what the specialist of social engineering have not been able to accomplish. At this stage we shall have ended history for good, because we shall have abolished human beings as such. Then a new history, beyond humanity, will begin.' Don't you think this idea is very similar to the old nazi frenzy?

What is this?! An erudite and catastrophistic seed?

No the problem begins because nature and humankind cannot be reduced to the genome. It's with this indomitable something that man has to deal. The fact is that cloning is the most appropriate technique in an age where consciousness – if you can call it that – is cloned. So cloning expresses symbolically something that has already happened, lives with no Eros, no passions, no ability to reflect...

The 'monocultures of the mind' Vandana Shiva talks about...

Yes, Vandana Shiva has rightly stressed that the destruction of diversified agricultural cultures goes hand in hand with the abolition of human culture. The dire truth is that cloning and genetic manipulation, joined with the agroindustrial development of monocultures will impoverish the overall food resources of the planet. It's a tragic irony that the danger of mass extinction of species linked to deforestation and monocultural trends in agribusiness are lightly interpreted as depressing catastrophism...

Well, aren't we getting used to ecological catastrophes? Isn't humankind geared to survival?

Wouldn't be so sure! But what if drugged survival was the only vision allowing to bear the tragedy of the long-term loss of resources linked to mass extinction of the species? You underestimate the impact of this extinction on a cosmological time scale. Life on earth is four billions years old, a third of the life of the Universe. And whereas the damages to the ozone layer or the 'greenhouse effect' could be 'repaired' within few generations (though you seem darn slow on these issues as well). The extinction of 50% of the planet's species is measured in terms of millions of years. What will the future generations say?

How have we gotten this far?

I'd like to know that! Some say that we should look into the 'spermatogenetic' strategies of patriarchal societies. You know Jahwe had promised to Abraham: "Your seed shall be as the stars of heaven!' Therefore up and go! Man sows his seeds right and left, while the natural resources and women are considered territories for colonization. Don't forget that according to the Bible the first human 'clone' was probably Eve, directly cloned from Adam's rib! But today the situation has gone beyond patriarchate – we march under the banners of crude genderless Rule, however well disguised under the most endearing and seductive uniforms!

And is there no remedy?

Maybe the cure lies in the very 'sickness', in the extraordinary human potential for knowledge. But there has to be a change of direction. Analytical operational thinking, finalized to the short-term interests of some multinational concern cannot be the rule on which to base the development of the next millennium. There's a great need for some sort of Eros knowledge, a recognition of the importance and awareness that could derive from a different relationship with the female principle.

What have women got to do with this?

The root of sustainability is a measure given by limitation. This is inscribed in female reproductive strategy. A man produces billions of spermatozoa a week, whereas a woman will produce a few hundreds egg cells... which contribute not only to the genetic endowment but also to the first nourishment of the fertilized cell. Not to speak of the investment of women in pregnancy and in maternal care for the first few years of life of newborns.... A woman must deal in a radical way with the question of available resources, because she knows very well that they are, after all, limited.

Women are receptive, they know how to welcome complexity and know with their own bodies the strategies of what can be sustained. Because they know this with their body they can think about it more truthfully than men. This may seem paradoxical but erotic thinking exists: it is the kind of thinking capable of passion, but also capable of holding together, containing and connecting diverse facts, respecting limitation to bearing in its womb new solutions. But female thinking has been frowned upon for millennia and has been wounded in its self-awareness and respect... however there are encouraging signs that it will take upon itself the responsibility of its own creative tasks...

What signs?

In India women have been the first to take on political action against the sale of manipulated seeds, a gulf away from the traditional agricultural culture that permits the sustenance of countless farmers. The plot of international profiteering conditions heavily political choices. Some time ago there was a major scandal because the multinational concerns managed to influence the Indian Congress who had to vote the importation of Soya oil from the States. The Congress also banned mustard seed oil, which had been produced for centuries by thousands of small family businesses. Curiously enough, two weeks before the Indian Congress' vote, the press had raised much ado about some unprecedented cases of mustard seed poisoning, which turned the balance definitely in favor of the American lobby.

Another example is biopiracy, that is the copyright of active substances contained in natural well-known products and used for thousands of years by traditional cultures. Women like Vandana Shiva and Maneka Gandhi are untiring in denouncing these abuses of power.

Will it be enough?

Do not underestimate women. Prophetic consciousness seems to have foreseen this crisis as a crucial turning point for humanity. The road leading to the liberation of Nature passes through the re-integration of the female principle. In the Bible, the Tree of Life – the tree of genetic continuity lost with the agricultural revolution – finds its place in the heart of the New Jerusalem. The Kingdom of God is described in parables as a seed sown in fertile ground, as a grain of mustard seed, as a Sacred Marriage.

But what is the Church's position?

If I weren't a plant I'd fly into a rage! I would say their attitude is beastly, but a beast has certainly more common sense than the pure souls of the Catholic commission on bioethics, whose only ideological stand against biotechnology lies in the opposition to the use of aborted foetuses. For the rest, the Church rather thinks twice before challenging the 'powers that be'. And to think that the vocation of the Church in defense of life could be expressed in a creative way with a Church of the Seed, recognizing the deep symbolic value of genetic continuity which is what links us to the universe and to what transcends us, to the evolutionary future, to life in all its forms. It is not a coincidence that the only plausible images of Paradise we have are Edenic ones. There is no better picture of biodiversity! But the reluctance of organized religions in recognizing the potential of this symbol makes me think that most religionists are far from having glimpsed the cosmic vision of the quality of the evolutionary mystery...

However there are many sacred traditions that have recognized it, from Taoist I-Ching to the lore of Iquito Indians, to the tales of the Arabian Nights...

Don't tell me that the Arabian Nights are a prophetic book!

Certainly! They are the storehouse of all the erotic wisdom repressed by patriarchate. Meaningfully enough, Sheherazade's tales heal a murderous king who manifests his madness killing at every new dawn the woman he has married at sunset. There's even a tale about me!

A tale about a sesame seed?!

Yes, the tale of Ali Baba and the forty thieves. Remember? The story begins with a treasure, which has been stolen by forty thieves. Forty is the number of patient preparation for great events. This shows that the stolen treasure points to something whose full meaning will be revealed in a very specific moment in history. Ali Baba finds it and takes it home. Of course when the thieves find out they have been robbed they are very angry and decide they must discover who's done it and do away with him! The real heroine of the story is Ali Baba's slave. She vanifies their first attempt at revenge. A spy has marked Ali Baba's door so that the thieves will recognize it, but by the time they arrive the slave has marked all the doors in the neighborhood. On a second occasion the thieves manage to find the right place and hide themselves in great earthen jars, and await the night to kill Ali. But the faithful female slave finds out and pours boiling oil in the jars killing all the thieves. In other words the stealing power of patriarchal repression looses it all, because female knowledge, though undervalued, is vigilant and saves the day!

But what have you got to do with this?

Don't you remember? The magic word used by Ali and the thieves to open the great cave where the treasure lies hidden is 'Open Sesame!' The smallest of seeds, me, contains the greatest of secrets! A secret which could grant humankind a new feeling of evolutionary continuity and relegitimate with the language of science the sacredness of this mystery! Otherwise humans will continue seeking futile consolations living 'for a few more gadgets'.

Science has foreseen the earthshaking power of this secret but some would rather marry conceit and profit with a rushed assault on the unbelievable complexity of life, the result of million years' interactions, impoverishing the overall genetic heritage. This is the real agroindustrial agenda. Today you have access to the secret of biodiversity and to the 'numbers' of each species. Isn't it extraordinary? But it remains to be seen if this will lead to the end of history and humankind or to the coming of age of human consciousness.

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