Tentative (id)entities: On technopolitical cultures and the experiencing of genetic testing

The practices around genetic testing for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer in one major counselling centre in Austria are at the core of this article. Our study investigates how people undergoing genetic testing try to make sense of this experience that is perceived to be new and uncommon in Austria and that is thus taking place in a setting not validated through public insurance support and is not yet embedded in any greater societal narrative about its merits, perils and overall value. In particular we aim at exploring what genetic testing means on the individual level but also how it relates people to different forms of collectives- genetic families, hybrid collectives and larger biosocialities. We will follow how as tested persons are transformed into biomedical entities, novel forms of identities are co-produced. In our analysis thus both entities and identities appear as inherently tentative as people move through the spacio-temporal landscape of biomedicine and society. People's accounts of genetic testing will be shown as deeply entangled with a specifically Austrian technopolitical culture, with broader civic epistemologies prevalent there, but also with diverse other thought-styles of social communities that people are part of. Investigating genetic testing in Austria in such a manner is meant to raise awareness of how much local differences in technopolitical cultures might matter when it comes to the implementation and uptake of a seemingly global biomedical technology.