Temporada 5 · Descolonizar la Singularidad · JVV-T5-19

Bodies.docx: editable anatomy in the CRISPR-Word era

I From the file to rewritable flesh

For Judith Butler gender is a series of performances bound by the norm;
for Paul B. Preciado, the contemporary body is a pharmaco-porno-device that accepts hormonal plugins and silicone.
2026 adds a context menu: CRISPR v4.3 + epigenetic editing are offered as “Find and Replace” in the Bio-Office™ Suite.

“If a cell is a paragraph, the genome is an RTF document: every margin can reflow.”

II Command table Word-CRISPR

Shortcut	Textual action	Biomolecular translation	Example [conceptual]
`Ctrl + H`	Find/Replace	Cas9 finds 20 nt, replaces the insert	Swap “XX” for “XY?” in a lab rat
`Track Changes`	Red marks	Temporary methyl tags	Silence the androgen receptor for 48 h
`Undo`	Revert the edit	DSB repaired via off-template HDR	Revive a deleted exon [low efficiency]
`Comment`	Margin note	RNA barcodes log the experiment	Traces a stem cell lineage

[Allegorical table; not a laboratory protocol.]

III Formula for somatic paragraph fluidity

\phi = \frac{E_m \times P_a}{R_{off} + 1}

E_m: editing efficiency [% of cells]
P_a: persistence [mitoses before drift]
R_{off}: off-target ratio [1 = 100 %]

A body enters “Word mode” when \phi ≥ 15.
In 2025 trials [NYU Stem-lab]: mean \phi ≈ 9 in post-natal tissue — the document is still read-only for most people.

IV Pilot trial — “Cyborg WordPad”, Berlin 2026

Edit	Subjects	\phi	Ethical observation
Hypertrichosis → off	3 adults	11	Hair reduced 35 %, body anxiety ↓
Insert dermo-chroma [UV green]	2 performers	18	Colour stable 9 months; NFT skin contract
Myostatin pause, Duchenne children	4 patients	7	Muscle strength ↑, but unpredictable genetic drift

The Bio-DJ committee considers these edits “therapeutic performance” under a Creative Gene ShareAlike licence.

V Home ritual [safe] – “Editing in comment mode”

01

Open a selfie in a notes app; write over it three adjectives about your body you would change.
02

Turn on “track changes” and invent the opposite version of each adjective.
03

Read both lists out loud; decide how many of the adjustments are really yours and how many come from the social spellchecker.
04

Only save the document if at least one change is born of your desire and not of external autocorrect.

[An exercise in symbolic self-editing, with no biological manipulation.]

VI Dangers & shields

Risk	Symptom	Safeguard
Malicious autoformat	A corporation offers a “premium body” template	Anti-property licence on personal genetics
Genetic macro virus	A CRISPR vector with a spy payload	Vir-inert sandbox, quorum CRISPR audit
Colonial versioning	Exporting the global north's “standard body”	Multilingual git-genome repository, copyleft for 99 years

VII Coda

“Save As… fluid flesh.”

Bodies.docx proposes that bodily identity open up like a collaborative document — but remember:
every Ctrl + S fixes a version you may already not be tomorrow.
Cultivate uncertainty, comment before replacing, reversible before excising: a politics of the living text in the age of CRISPR-Word.