Scratch a Theory, You Find a Biography: A Conversation with Troy Duster

Interviewer: Alondra Nelson

Page author: Kit

Summary
This chapter is an interview or conversation between Alondra Nelson and Troy Duster. Nelson begins the interview with Duster by asking about his grandmother, Ida B. Wells, and his mother, Alfreda Duster. Duster then recounts what it was like growing up in the South Side of Chicago. He discusses “code switching” and the “tightrope” he walked between the worlds of his home, South Side, and Northwestern saying, “I became bilingual, bicultural, bimodal” (311). From this conversation, Duster begins speaking about his time at Northwestern and what eventually brought him to study sociology and to move to studying at UCLA. Through UCLA, he traces the rise of sociology and the changes that were occurring. From here, Duster recounts his research in the prison system and how he began studying drugs. Finally, Duster tracks how studying drugs became more focused on genetics and his time on a committee that considered the social/legal/ethical implications of the Human Genome Project. They discuss his book Backdoor to Eugenics which Nelson calls “foundational to the sociology of genetics” (324). Duster concludes by talking about the increasing issue of race and genomics. Talking about Paul Rabinow and “biosociality” or categorizing people by specific genetic disease rather than class, race, ethnicity; he says,

“We shall see which wins out, but I am betting that a biological definition of the group is not going to transcend existing social categories. Because

those touting personalized medicine still today use old racial categories, we now have the reintroduction of the old taxonomies through the twenty-

first-century lens of genetic markers. This is what I have called ‘the molecular reinscription of race.’” (327)

Connection to other readings
I immediately connected this interview to Aja Y. Martinez’s Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of Critical Race Theory. Part of this could stem from the fact that I read this concurrently, but I also think this lines up well with Martinez’s explanation of counterstory as autobiographical reflection. In this case, the reflection is happening through the interview about his story.

I also see connections between this and AD Carson’s work: I Used to Love to Dream. I mostly see this connection because they are both talking about their homes and experiences in similar ways even though the format is very different. (See also: Techo-Vernacular Creativity and Innovation across the African Diaspora and Global South)

I also wonder if Beth Coleman’s “Race as Technology” could connect with this interview because it offers a version of race as technology that I think would be interesting to hold up and compare to the concept of “biosociality” that Duster discourages at the end. See Racialized Surveillance in the Digital Service Economy for further description of Coleman’s “Race as Technology.”

Connection to other chapters
Here are some links to other chapters that may be related (this section is meant to be done collectively by all class members)