Biosignature, Technosignature, Event: Deconstruction, Astrobiology, and the Search for a Wholly Other Origin

Abstract

Here I pursue a deconstructive reading of astrobiology, the emerging science dedicated to a double quest: solving the mystery of life's origin and discovering life beyond Earth. Astrobiology, I argue, is organized as a response to the aporetic formulation assumed by the origin of life in modern molecular biology, where (as Derrida's argues in Life Death) it becomes the origin of textuality. Because all Earth life shares a single genetic code, astrobiologists are seeking a second; hoping that a sort of multi-planetary comparative genomics may reveal the secret to life's origin. But the aporia repeats in the figure of the biosignature, the trace of life.