Small Chemicals of Trauma: Epigenetics as Colonial Unknowing

In Australia, some Indigenous and non-Indigenous scientists, health workers, psychologists, and others have identified a resonance between epigenetics and Indigenous scholarship on intergenerational trauma. Epigenetics is a postgenomic science that seeks to demonstrate how environments can “get under the skin” to shape health outcomes by altering gene expression. Intergenerational trauma is a similar concept, as it describes how past harms such as colonial policies can make themselves felt in the present. Using ethnographic data from interviews with researchers across Australia and observations from scientific conferences, this article critically examines how the normative tools of epigenetic studies are increasingly positioned by scientists as the route to a valuable form of evidence for addressing intergenerational trauma and health injustice. Through the frame of “colonial unknowing,” we argue that the settler state functions by valuing certain forms of evidence of trauma over others; namely, epigenetics is positioned as offering objective scientific evidence seen as more valuable than narrative testimony and evidence rooted in Indigenous ontologies, thereby displacing prior knowledges of how trauma is embodied and enrolling communities into conditions of perpetual rediscovery. While many participants reject epigenetic knowledge production outright for this reason, we explore how others strategically engage with it in the present while simultaneously challenging its growing epistemic power and future promise.