188 RüdigerKunow
Thetrajectoryoftheseprocesseshasbeensketchedmanytimes,and
neednotbereiteratedhere.^36 Theyconvergedinaconstellationofanall-
embracing biological normophilia where human bodies and their
biologicalsubstanceswerebecomingwhatIwouldliketocallacontact
zone where socio-cultural oughtness (the Hegelian "Sollen") encounters
the biological status quo ("Sein") of individual persons. In this
encounter,whichgoesonincessantlyduringthehumanlifecourse,non-
normativebodiesareforcedintopublicemergencethroughtheconduits
of social and cultural communication. Norms thus signal a "state of
'subsumption'" which Fredric Jameson has argued is characteristic of
capitalist modernity such that what is, like biology, seemingly outside
the calculus of profit "no longer lies outside capital and economics but
hasbeenabsorbedintoit"(RepresentingCapital71).
These processes of subsumption will be the object of analysis in the
ensuing chapters. Before turning to them, however, it is necessary for
me to address a set of recent developments that have effectively
reconfiguredthiscontactzoneandaddednewurgenciestotheoughtness
withwhichitisinvested.Theseurgenciesarefueledbythejointefforts
(^36) Especially Giorgio Agamben's work on "bare life" and its role in
concentrationcampsandotherspacesofexceptionhasachievedsomenotoriety
inculturalcritique.Agambendrawsalinebetweenformsofhumanlifethatare
biologically existent but legally dead: "Precisely because they were lacking
almost all the rights and expectations that we customarily attribute to human
existence,andyetwerestillbiologicallyalive,theycametobesituatedinalimit
zone between life and death, inside and outside, in which they were no longer
anythingbutbarelife"(159).Sincemyargumentisnotinterestedinthetwilight
zone between life and death which characterizes the Agambian state of
exception,Iwillnotreferencehisworkhere.Thebroadoutlinesofhisargument
are rewritten in ways that are closer to my own interests in Aihwa Ong's
NeoliberalismasException(2006), where she notes: "... exception can also be
a positive decision to include selected populations and spaces as targets of
'calculative choices and value orientations' associated with neoliberal reform"
(Neoliberalism 121). I will return to this aspect in my reflections on
biotechnological enhancement below, under the heading "Semiotics and
Semantics." – For an incisive critique of Agamben's misinterpretation of bare
life in the context of Nazi concentration camps, cf. J. M. Bernstein. "Intact and
FragmentedBodies:VersionsofEthic'AfterAuschwitz.'"NewGermanCritique
97(2006):31-52.Print.