This article introduces chimerism and mosaicism as two recent scientific
‘discoveries’ that present challenges to western heteronormative
notions of kinship. Chimerism, in the form of xenotransplantation, already demands a
rethinking of traditional boundaries between what is considered
‘kin’ and ‘non-kin’. Recent biological
studies describing chimerism as two genetically distinct cell lines in one organism
not caused by transplantation, invites further questions regarding the stability of
kinship ideology. The aim of the article is to argue, with anthropologists and
feminist science studies scholars, that the western understanding of kinship relies
upon a problematic use of ‘nature’, and that this dependence
necessarily produces shifting and contradictory definitions of kinship.
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