Introduction:BiologizingCulture/CulturingBiology 11
which scripted human biology as a passive object of governance. As a
consequence, Foucault's schematic invocations of "the state" have often
been passed on unquestioned. However, and especially today, the
politics side of biopolitics manifests itself in frameworks that are quite
different from those he contemplated. In capitalist societies today,
biopoltical issues are mediated (at least ideally so) filtered through
various public fora (some open, some less open). In these fora, the
hearing which scientists, legal experts, business representatives and
advocacy groups get is filtered into suggestions for future action. Such
recommendations, invested with the authority of "expert opinion" most
often take textual form, often even narrative form, and have all the
attributes, strategies and organizational features which literary and
cultural studies have learned to identify, classify, and critique. Even
whiletheHumanitiesareroutinelyleftoutofthedebatebeforeitenters
the public sphere, their expertise in dealing with texts opens up a space
of intervention into the alleged arcana of committee papers and policy
recommendations.
Thus conceived, the Foucauldian model, while an unavoidable point
ofreference,willprovetobeofonlylimitedvaluefortheinquiryinthis
book, for a number of reasons. First, it is rather mechanistic and uni-
directional, allowing only a small space for resistances against the
Leviathanic pressures of the state. As I will be showing below, the
human body can very well also be an oppositional space, as especially
the debates on old age and disability can demonstrate (more on this in
the chapter on non-normative embodiments). Secondly, and possibly
part of the reason why Foucault's concept of biopolitics has become so
popular, there is the fact that it offered proof for the assumption—
carrying much weight in the Humanities—that social relations are part
of an ongoing (cultural) construction process. Such a constructivist
emphasis conveniently (for some people at least) eludes, if not outright
erases, the crucial role of the economy and the inequalities and
disparities coming in its wake. But these disparities are, as I will show,
crucial for the place and the possibilities accorded to humans and their
respective biological endowments, as my readings of biological
enhancementstrategiesorcompulsoryableismwillshow.
Whatalsoremainsoutsidethepurviewofsuchconceptualizationsis
the possibility that the biosphere, singly or its component parts, can be
endowed with an agentic capacity of its own. Richard Shusterman's