Rosi Braidotti：Bio-Power and Necro-Politics.doc

Bio-Power and Necro-PoliticsReflections on an ethics of sustainability Rosi BraidottiThe contextContemporary debates in the fields of social theory and cultural analysis have been concentrating on the politics of life itself, with special emphasis on the shifting boundaries between life and death. Bio-power, as Foucault argued,[1] refers not only to the government of the living, but also to multiple practices of dying. ?The politics of life itself? designates the extent to which the notion of bio-power has emerged as an organizing principle for the proliferating discourses that make technologically mediated ?life? into a contested political field.[2] Living matter itself becomes the subject and not the object of enquiry and this shift towards a bio-centred perspective affects the very structure and the interaction of social relations. One of the manifestations of this historical context is what has been called the genetic social imaginary.[3] This is manifested in the market economy through a tendency to use a terminology borrowed from genetics and evolutionary theory for the purpose of commercial and political discourses. An instance of this is the emphasis on the ?next generation? of gadgets, cars and consumers’ electronics. Contemporary media and culture also spreads a sort of genetic citizenship as a form of spectatorship by promoting the visualization of the life of genes in medical practices, popular culture, cinema and advertising. Another aspect to this phenomenon is the uses of genetics in political debates on race, ethnicity and immigration, as well as public debates ranging from abortion and stem-cell research to new kinship and family structures. Discourses about vitalism[4] and vital politics are also circulating.Issues of power and power relations are central to this project. The notion of ?life itself? lies at the heart of bio-genetic capitalism[5] as a site of financial investments and potential profit. Technological interventions neithe