Breaking the Frame: Confronting Three Challenges of Techno-Utopianism (original) (raw)
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This article considers the role played by discourses of nature in structuring the cultural politics of anti-GMO activism. It argues that such discourses have been successful rhetorical tools for activists because they mobilize widely resonant nature-culture dualisms that separate the natural and human worlds. However, these discourses hold dubious political implications. In valorizing the natural as a source of essential truth, natural purity discourses fail to challenge how naturalizations have been used to legitimize sexist, racist and colonial systems of injustice and oppression. Rather, they revitalize the discursive purchase of appeals to nature as a justification for the status quo, indirectly reinforcing existing power relations. Moreover, these discourses fail to challenge the critical though contingent reality of GMOs' location within the wider framework of neoliberal social relations. Fortunately, appeals to natural purity have not been the only effective strategy for opposing GMOs. Activist campaigns that directly target the political economic implications of GMOs within the context of neoliberalism have also had successes without resorting to appeals to the purity of nature. The successes of these campaigns suggest that while nature-culture dualisms remain politically effective normative groundings, concerns over equity, farmers' rights, and democracy retain potential as ideological terrains in the struggle for social justice. Cet article considère le rôle joué par les discours de la nature dans la structuration de la politique culturelle de l'activisme anti-OGM. Il fait valoir que de tels discours ont été des outils rhétoriques réussis pour les militants, car ils mobilisent des dualismes de culture de la nature, largement résonnants, qui séparent les mondes naturel et humain. Cependant, ces discours ont des implications politiques douteuses. En valorisant le naturel comme source de vérité essentielle, les discours de la pureté naturelle ne parviennent pas à contester la façon dont les naturalisations ont été utilisées pour légitimer les systèmes sexistes, racistes et coloniaux d'injustice et d'oppression. Plutôt, ils revitalisent l'achat discursif d'appels à la nature comme justification du statu quo, renforçant indirectement les relations de pouvoir existantes. En outre, ces discours ne parviennent pas à contester la réalité critique mais contingente de l'emplacement des OGM dans le cadre plus large des relations sociales néolibérales. Heureusement, les appels à la pureté naturelle n'ont pas été la seule stratégie efficace pour s'opposer aux OGM. Les campagnes militantes qui ciblent directement les implications économiques économiques des OGM dans le contexte du néolibéralisme ont également eu des succès sans recourir à la pureté de la nature. Les succès de ces campagnes suggèrent que, si les dualités de la nature et de la culture restent des bases normatives politiquement efficaces, les préoccupations concernant l'équité, les droits des agriculteurs et la démocratie conservent le potentiel en tant que terrains idéologiques dans la lutte pour la justice sociale. Este artículo considera el papel que desempeñan los discursos de la naturaleza en la estructuración de la política cultural del activismo anti-OGM. Sostiene que tales discursos han sido herramientas retóricas exitosas para los activistas porque movilizan dualismos de naturaleza-cultura ampliamente resonantes que separan los mundos natural y humano. Sin embargo, estos discursos tienen dudosas implicaciones políticas. Al valorar lo natural como fuente de verdad esencial, los discursos de pureza natural no cuestionan cómo se han utilizado las naturalizaciones para legitimar los sistemas sexistas, racistas y coloniales de injusticia y opresión. Más bien, revitalizan la compra discursiva de apelaciones a la naturaleza como justificación del status quo, reforzando indirectamente las relaciones de poder existentes. Además, estos discursos no desafían la realidad crítica aunque contingente de la ubicación de los OGM dentro del marco más amplio de las relaciones sociales neoliberales. Afortunadamente, los llamamientos a la pureza natural no han sido la única estrategia efectiva para oponerse a los OGM. Las campañas activistas dirigidas directamente a las implicaciones políticas económicas de los OGM en el contexto del neoliberalismo también han tenido éxitos sin recurrir a la pureza de la naturaleza. Los éxitos de estas campañas sugieren que si bien los dualismos naturaleza-cultura siguen siendo fundamentaciones normativas políticamente efectivas, las preocupaciones sobre la equidad, los derechos de los agricultores y la democracia conservan el potencial como terrenos ideológicos en la lucha por la justicia social.
2018
This book addresses the unprecedented convergence between the digital and the corporeal in the life sciences and turns to Foucault's biopolitics in order to understand how life is being turned into a technological object. It examines a wide range of bioscientific knowledge practices that allow life to be known through codes that can be shared (copied), owned (claimed, and managed) and optimised (remade through codes based on standard language and biotech engineering visions). The book's approach is captured in the title, which refers to 'the biopolitical'. The authors argue that through discussions of political theories of sovereignty and related geopolitical conceptions of nature and society, we can understand how crucially important it is that life is constantly unsettling and disrupting the established and familiar ordering of the material world and the related ways of thinking and acting politically. The biopolitical dynamics involved are conceptualised as the 'metacode of life', which refers to the shifting configurations of living materiality and the merging of conventional boundaries between the natural and artificial, the living and non-living. The result is a globalising world in which the need for an alternative has become a core part of its political and legal instability, and the authors identify a number of possible alternative platforms to understand life and the living as framed by the 'metacodes' of life. This book will appeal to scholars of science and technology studies, as well as scholars of the sociology, philosophy, and anthropology of science, who are seeking to understand social and technical heterogeneity as a characteristic of the life sciences.
Practicing Dialectics of Technoscience during the Anthropocene
2021
This paper develops a dialectical methodology for assessing technoscience during the Anthropocene. How to practice Hegelian dialectics of technoscience today? First of all, dia-lectics is developed here in close interaction with contemporary technoscientific research endeavours, which are addressed from a position of proximity and from an 'oblique' perspective. Contrary to empirical (sociological or ethnographical) research, the focus is on how basic concepts of life, nature and technology are acted out in practice. Notably, this paper zooms in on a synthetic cell project called BaSyC as a concrete instantiation of converging views of life, nature and technology currently at work in technoscience. While dia-lectics is used to explore the significance of this project (of this 'experience' in the dialecti-cal sense), the synthetic cell as a case study also allows us to demonstrate the remarkable relevance of dialectics for understanding contemporary research, notably because it incites us to see the synthetic cell project as a concrete exemplification of life under Anthropoce-nic conditions. Should we assess the synthetic cell as the ultimate realisation of the tech-noscientific will to control and optimise life, or rather as an effort to bridge the disruptive collision between technoscience and nature, or both?
Life as surplus: biotechnology and capitalism in the neoliberal era
2007
Reviewed by Eric Deibel Reading Life as Surplus by Melinda Cooper is likely to overwhelm even those familiar with critical studies of the interface of the life sciences and capitalism. The book combines a wide range of developments in the life sciences in close association with theoretical observations on some of the basic concepts of political economy. Specifically, Cooper asks poignant questions about the speculative future of the accumulation of capital in relation to life as a technological creation. She raises such questions with an insistence that has become rare in studies of genetic engineering, recapturing some of the urgency that in the 1980s and 1990s surrounded topics like the patenting of DNA, corporate concentration and the regulation of risks. Most distinctive about her approach is that she is able to retain a critical position while not allowing the biological to be reduced to the economical nor the other way around. Interestingly, her analysis is focused in great detail on the coalescence of the neoliberal promises of growth without limits and the drive to overcome natural limitations in the life sciences. This is the case, for instance, in the imaginaries that companies and scientists in plant biotechnology like to identify themselves with that feature rich farmers producing food for the people, (bio-)fuel for their cars and even some of their (bio-)medicines. Such promises, however, coincide with a relentless drive to turn life forms into commodities and a relentless exploitation of life on earth.
This article identifies four different types of posthumanism that run through the current literature on the implications of new biotechnologies for what it means to be human: a ‘dystopic’, a ‘liberal’, a ‘radical’ and a ‘methodological’ posthumanism, which correspond roughly to bioconservatism, transhumanism, cyborgology and STS scholarship. I argue that dystopic and liberal posthumanism, although they are the dominant discourses in the debate on emerging biotechnologies and human enhancement, cannot provide sound theoretical frameworks for this discussion insofar as they are grounded in the humanist divide between humans and the world – and humans and technology – that is precisely being undermined by the technologies in question. Radical and methodological posthumanism offer important non-humanist alternatives to these discourses. Their rejection of the humanist distinction between autonomous human beings and a world of objects, and a recognition of the intricate enmeshing between humans and technological artifacts, allows them to develop non-essentialist models of human/technology relations that can better account for how humans engage with biotechnologies. But these approaches also present some important shortcomings. Radical posthumanism tends to frame biotechnologies as either inherently deconstructive (i.e. liberatory) or inherently disciplinary; a framework that makes it difficult to account for how foundational categories like ‘nature’ and ‘the human’ are being transformed and reinterpreted today. And methodological posthumanism too often does not carry through the implications its analyses have for subjectivity. This critique forms the platform for a final perspective, a ‘mediated posthumanism’. On the one hand this perspective draws on radical posthumanist readings of the shuffling around of foundational terms, but seeks to explore how the meeting of deconstructive and disciplinary tendencies can result in the creation of novel understandings of ‘nature’ and ‘the human’. On the other hand, it carries through the transformative implications the notion of technological mediation has for subjectivity by linking it to Foucault’s later work on care of the self and ethical subject constitution.
philosophy & technology, 2023
In this paper, we carry out a critical analysis of the concept of technology in the current design of the bio-based economy (BBE). Looking at the current status of the BBE, we observe a dominant focus on technological innovation as the principal solution to climatic instability. We take a critical stance towards this "ecomodernist" worldview, addressing its fundamental assumptions, and offer an underarticulated explanation as to why a successful transition toward a sustainable BBE-i.e. one that fully operates within the Earth's carrying capacity-has not yet been reached. Bernard Stiegler has developed a philosophical perspective on the concept of economy, broadening it to include the human condition through the notion of desire. This theory can help to obtain a more profound understanding of why ecomodernist strategies are dominant today. Stiegler's theory of the libidinal economy offers an analysis of controlled and exploited human desire as a primary driver behind modern techno-economic structures. Our hypothesis is that a critique of contemporary technofixism as a critique of libidinal economy is a necessary step to take in the discussion around the BBE as a concept, if the BBE is ever to bring about a system that can truly operate within the Earth's carrying capacity.
Narrating technonatures: discourses of biotechnology in a neoliberal era
Journal of Political Ecology, 2018
This article considers the role played by discourses of nature in structuring the cultural politics of anti-GMO activism. It argues that such discourses have been successful rhetorical tools for activists because they mobilize widely resonant nature-culture dualisms that separate the natural and human worlds. However, these discourses hold dubious political implications. In valorizing the natural as a source of essential truth, natural purity discourses fail to challenge how naturalizations have been used to legitimize sexist, racist and colonial systems of injustice and oppression. Rather, they revitalize the discursive purchase of appeals to nature as a justification for the status quo, indirectly reinforcing existing power relations. Moreover, these discourses fail to challenge the critical though contingent reality of GMOs' location within the wider framework of neoliberal social relations. Fortunately, appeals to natural purity have not been the only effective strategy for ...
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (in evaluation), 2020
A reductionist bias inhabits the political philosophy of liberalism, as illustrated by its two axial pillars of value-neutrality-which construes the individual human being as self-determined while disembedding her from her sociocultural ferment-and individual (negative) freedom-which overemphasizes the absence of external constraints as opposed to a conception of agency required to positively affect one's environment (positive freedom). As a result, we argue, prospects for individual realization are constrained to a private sphere embedded in consumer culture and increasingly in subcultural bubbles, thus cutting the individual's ties to the political body, draining the collective spirit, and leading to a managerial-technocratic approach of public affairs. A highly differentiated functionalist system constituted by seemingly autopoietic units and subsystems thus comes to replace the holistic complexity of the global ecosystems of the biosphere and the socio-sphere. This article offers a thorough critique of the prevailing dogmatic adherence to these maxims of the liberal worldview in contemporary politics and culture, and explores alternatives that seem promising for unblocking existing cultural-political potentials in an interdependent globalized world for a social-ecological "Great Transformation" towards a livable and worthwhile Anthropocene.
Handbook on Environmental Labour Studies / Eds. Nora Räthzel, Dimitris Stevis and David Uzzell (London: Palgrave Macmillan), 2021
This chapter critically reviews André Gorz's thought, in particular his labour-based political ecology, to argue that it belongs within Environmental Labour Studies as a cutting-edge field of inquiry. Based on Gorz's theoretical toolkit, it discusses the historical transformation of the link between capitalist development, natural environment and working-class struggles. In particular, the chapter focuses on Gorz's analysis of the ecological crisis as a crisis of capitalist reproduction, whose implications are relevant for a critical understanding of the post-Fordist mode of accumulation. To grasp the ecological dimension of contemporary valorisation-that is, to analyse how physical limits to growth are turned from obstacles to drivers of accumulation-the conclusions intermingle Gorz's insights with recent debates on biocapitalism, drawing especially on Melinda Cooper's contributions.