Abstract In The Politics of Life Itself, Nikolas Rose argues that contemporary genetic medicine has given rise to the "genetically at-risk subject," which is distinguished from other forms of genetic selfhood by the shift from a paradigm of genetic determinism to one of genetic opportunity. This article analyzes the discourse of the genetically at-risk subject in one particular biosocial community (the "previvors" of FORCE) to demonstrate that despite—and in many cases because of—the shift to a paradigm of genetic opportunity, discourses of genetic determinism have not disappeared but instead have mutated in response to new exigences for new audiences. Based on both this analysis and other rhetorical readings of genetic discourse, this article argues that to distinguish among the many types of subjectivity at work within the contemporary era of genetic medicine, we have to understand not only how scientific and biopolitical changes have made those subjectivities possible, but also how the ethical practices associated with specific diseases work rhetorically in communities of those at genetic risk.

Responding to critiques of instrumental approaches to rhetoric and writing, this article explains why such approaches do not necessarily suppress the materiality of language or inhibit the writer's ability to experience that materiality. Relying on Samuel Weber's re-translation of Heidegger's term, Ge-stell, as “emplacement” and Maurice Blanchot's understanding of the contradictory function of negation in language, the article demonstrates how rhetoric both secures language in place with a particular meaning for the sake of an external goal and unsecures language from that meaning. Without endorsing all instrumental approaches to rhetoric and writing (or the concept of instrumentality in general), the article then argues that there is no reliable way to distinguish inherently valuable writing from instrumentally valuable writing.