CorporealSemiotics:TheBodyoftheText/theTextoftheBody 365
sufficiency, human life in its pristine, "natural" condition is coming to
beseenasapotentialsourceofinefficiency—whichcanbeamendedby
enhancementtechnologies.
The term "economy" is important here. Some of the gene therapies
already available now have a price tag of upwards of $100,000, and
otherstoemergeinthefuturewillcertainlynotcomeatWalmartprices;
only those who are willing and able to "invest" into their bodies are
given a chance to delay the restraints of human embodiment and
especiallytheirgrowingold.Inthisperspective,aperson'sembodiment,
especially if itfails to meetthenormssetbysocietyandculture,comes
tobeviewednolongerassimplybadluckorauniversalcondition("we
all age") but an embodied liability that replicates, even reinforces, the
unequaldistributionoflifechancesincapitalistsocieties.Iwillreturnto
theseissueslater.
Suchreflectionsremindusofthefact,sometimesforgotteninallthe
excitement about the new poetics of life hatched by genomics and
enhancement, that these enhanced life forms do not exist solely in the
rarified world of hi-tech laboratories but also in the social world of
social beings, a world increasingly shaped by the imperatives of
capitalisminitscurrentneoliberalform.
We the People, in Order to Have More Perfect Bodies: Biotechnology
andNeoliberalGovernance
More than thirty years ago, Fredric Jameson described the then new
stage of global capitalism as one that would seek to bring under its
domination two as yet largely unaffected areas: nature and the
unconscious (Po stmodernism49). Concerning nature, especially human
nature, his observation has been truly prophetic.^61 Many observers have
noticedthatneoliberalismasitunfoldsintheUnitedStatesis"crucially
(^61) Sundar Kaushik Rajan would argue that the psyche has also become
thoroughly commodified, by new therapeutic procedures and the massive
implementation of the drug Prozac (107-08, 154). Cf. also the filmProzac
Nation(2001).–Myreadingofneoliberalismasasocialand culturalforcewas
resourced by Wendy Brown'sUndoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth
Revolution.Cambridge:MITPress,2015.Print.