Cultural Geographies · 2007 · 535 citations · 0 references
HumanitiesBiologyPolitical ScienceBioethicsBiosecurityPhilosophy Of BiologyBiological IndividualityGlobal BioethicsGlobal Biosecurity LawHuman BiologyPolitical IdeologyPolitical PowerBiological NonproliferationBiopolitics Of The BodySovereign Risk
The molecularization of life has produced a new somatic self and ethopolitical order, while also raising biosecurity concerns that frame biological life as a vulnerable subject in an unpredictable, risk‑laden molecular world. The essay investigates two interpretations of how molecularization politicizes life, arguing that focusing only on the first overlooks how the second justifies sovereign power to shape biological futures. The analysis finds that the first interpretation generates new governmentality and pastoral power, whereas the second has been adopted to legitimize global sovereign interventions aimed at pre‑empting certain biological outcomes.
In what ways can it be said of the molecularization of life that it has made our biological existence a political concern in new ways? This essay examines two different answers to this question. The first, exemplified by the work of Nikolas Rose, suggests that the molecularization of life, together with the individualization of risk, has given rise to a new ‘somatic’ self, and a new ‘ethopolitical’ order in which our biological life has becomes our life's work. The second, most evident in growing concern over ‘biosecurity’, posits a vulnerable subject, thrown into an unpredictable molecular world characterized by exchange and circulation and full of ‘emergent’ risks. Whereas the former has arguably led to new forms of governmentality, and new kinds of pastoral power, this paper argues that the latter has been widley taken up as a justification for the global extension of forms of sovereign power whose purpose is to pre-empt certain biological futures in favour of others. An exclusive focus on the former not only risks leaving the latter unexamined, it may leave us unable to consider how the two are related.