Biopolitics and the molecularization of life
Identifieur interne : 001052 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 001051; suivant : 001053Biopolitics and the molecularization of life
Auteurs : Bruce BraunSource :
- Cultural Geographies [ 1474-4740 ] ; 2007-01.
English descriptors
- Teeft :
- American geographers, Animal health, Animal populations, Annual meeting, Anthony fauci, Bernard vallat, Biological citizenship, Biological existence, Biological future, Biological life, Biological lives, Biopolitical, Biopolitics, Biosecurity, Biotechnology, Braun, Capacity building, Cell research, Citizenship, Continuous state, Cultural geographies, Cultural geographies figure, Dangerous fragments, Different dimension, Different terms, Early detection, Emergence, Ethical decisions, Ethopolitical, Ethopolitics, Eugenic body, Eugenics, Finance capital, Foucault, Genetic, Genetic body, Genetic citizenship, Genetic code, Genetic conditions, Genetic inheritance, Genetic material, Genetic risk, Genetics, Genome, Genomic body, Geography, Giorgio agamben, Global, Global economy, Global genome, Global networks, Global populations, Globalization, Governmentality, Great significance, Health security, Human services, Important respects, Individual management, Infectious diseases, Influenza, Influenza viruses, International symposium, Laboratory networks, Liberal eugenics, Liberal peace, Life phenomena, Life sciences, Local etiologies, Long history, Melinda cooper notes, Molecular biology, Molecular geographies, Molecular level, Molecular life, Molecular scale, Molecularization, Molecularized, Molecularized body, Mutation, National body, National institute, National institutes, National stock, Neoliberal governmentality, Novel ways, Other hand, Other words, Pastoral power, Philosophical status, Political calculation, Political concern, Political discourse, Political existence, Political life, Political rationalities, Political technologies, Present moment, Princeton university press, Private health insurance, Providential state, Public health, Rationality, Real time, Same time, Social body, Social groups, Social sciences, Somatic, Sovereign power, Sovereign space, Stanford university press, States department, Stock values, Such things, Surveillance networks, Surveillance systems, Truth regimes, Unending examination, Unknown unknowns, Virtual security, Wild birds.
Abstract
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.
Url:
DOI: 10.1177/1474474007072817
Links to Exploration step
ISTEX:02B70A48C36CD496A89191354667052F949624EDLe document en format XML
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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. 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Miller</json:string><json:string>Henri Bergson</json:string><json:string>Karen-Sue Taussig</json:string><json:string>Tommy Thompson</json:string><json:string>Bernard Vallat</json:string><json:string>M. Sparke</json:string><json:string>N. Rose</json:string><json:string>Rebecca Wienbar</json:string><json:string>S. Franklin</json:string><json:string>G. Agamben</json:string><json:string>Giorgio Agamben</json:string><json:string>G. Burchell</json:string><json:string>Nikolas Rose</json:string><json:string>C. Gordon</json:string><json:string>J. Stacey</json:string><json:string>Biographical</json:string><json:string>G. Davies</json:string><json:string>S. Roberts</json:string><json:string>Cooper</json:string><json:string>Gilles Deleuze</json:string><json:string>Bingham</json:string><json:string>Rose</json:string><json:string>Hinchliffe</json:string><json:string>N. 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social science</json:string><json:string>2 - geography</json:string><json:string>2 - environmental studies</json:string></wos><scienceMetrix><json:string>1 - economic & social sciences</json:string><json:string>2 - social sciences</json:string><json:string>3 - geography</json:string></scienceMetrix><scopus><json:string>1 - Physical Sciences</json:string><json:string>2 - Environmental Science</json:string><json:string>3 - Environmental Science (miscellaneous)</json:string><json:string>1 - Social Sciences</json:string><json:string>2 - Social Sciences</json:string><json:string>3 - Cultural Studies</json:string><json:string>1 - Social Sciences</json:string><json:string>2 - Social Sciences</json:string><json:string>3 - Geography, Planning and Development</json:string></scopus><inist><json:string>1 - sciences humaines et sociales</json:string><json:string>2 - histoire des sciences et des techniques</json:string></inist></categories><publicationDate>2007</publicationDate><copyrightDate>2007</copyrightDate><doi><json:string>10.1177/1474474007072817</json:string></doi><id>02B70A48C36CD496A89191354667052F949624ED</id><score>1</score><fulltext><json:item><extension>pdf</extension><original>true</original><mimetype>application/pdf</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/ark:/67375/M70-HK3JMC80-6/fulltext.pdf</uri></json:item><json:item><extension>zip</extension><original>false</original><mimetype>application/zip</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/ark:/67375/M70-HK3JMC80-6/bundle.zip</uri></json:item><istex:fulltextTEI uri="https://api.istex.fr/ark:/67375/M70-HK3JMC80-6/fulltext.tei"><teiHeader><fileDesc><titleStmt><title level="a" type="main" xml:lang="en">Biopolitics and the molecularization of life</title></titleStmt><publicationStmt><authority>ISTEX</authority><publisher scheme="https://scientific-publisher.data.istex.fr">Sage Publications</publisher><pubPlace>Sage CA: Thousand Oaks, CA</pubPlace><availability><licence><p>sage</p></licence></availability><p scheme="https://loaded-corpus.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XBH-0J1N7DQT-B"></p><date>2007</date></publicationStmt><notesStmt><note type="research-article" scheme="https://content-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XTP-1JC4F85T-7">research-article</note><note type="journal" scheme="https://publication-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/JMC-0GLKJH51-B">journal</note></notesStmt><sourceDesc><biblStruct type="inbook"><analytic><title level="a" type="main" xml:lang="en">Biopolitics and the molecularization of life</title><author xml:id="author-0000"><persName><forename type="first">Bruce</forename><surname>Braun</surname></persName><affiliation>Department of Geography, University of Minnesota</affiliation></author><idno type="istex">02B70A48C36CD496A89191354667052F949624ED</idno><idno type="ark">ark:/67375/M70-HK3JMC80-6</idno><idno type="DOI">10.1177/1474474007072817</idno><idno type="article-id">10.1177_1474474007072817</idno></analytic><monogr><title level="j">Cultural Geographies</title><idno type="pISSN">1474-4740</idno><idno type="eISSN">1477-0881</idno><idno type="publisher-id">CGJ</idno><idno type="PublisherID-hwp">spcgj</idno><imprint><publisher>Sage Publications</publisher><pubPlace>Sage CA: Thousand Oaks, CA</pubPlace><date type="published" when="2007-01"></date><biblScope unit="volume">14</biblScope><biblScope unit="issue">1</biblScope><biblScope unit="page" from="6">6</biblScope><biblScope unit="page" to="28">28</biblScope></imprint></monogr></biblStruct></sourceDesc></fileDesc><profileDesc><creation><date>2007</date></creation><langUsage><language ident="en">en</language></langUsage><abstract xml:lang="en"><p>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.</p></abstract><textClass><keywords scheme="keyword"><list><head>keywords</head><item><term>Biopolitics</term></item><item><term>biosecurity</term></item><item><term>molecularization</term></item><item><term>Nikolas Rose</term></item></list></keywords></textClass></profileDesc><revisionDesc><change when="2007-01">Published</change></revisionDesc></teiHeader></istex:fulltextTEI><json:item><extension>txt</extension><original>false</original><mimetype>text/plain</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/ark:/67375/M70-HK3JMC80-6/fulltext.txt</uri></json:item></fulltext><metadata><istex:metadataXml wicri:clean="corpus sage not found" wicri:toSee="no header"><istex:xmlDeclaration>version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"</istex:xmlDeclaration><istex:docType PUBLIC="-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v2.3 20070202//EN" URI="journalpublishing.dtd" name="istex:docType"></istex:docType><istex:document><article article-type="research-article" dtd-version="2.3" xml:lang="EN"><front><journal-meta><journal-id journal-id-type="hwp">spcgj</journal-id><journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">CGJ</journal-id><journal-title>Cultural Geographies</journal-title><issn pub-type="ppub">1474-4740</issn><publisher><publisher-name>Sage Publications</publisher-name><publisher-loc>Sage CA: Thousand Oaks, CA</publisher-loc></publisher></journal-meta><article-meta><article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.1177/1474474007072817</article-id><article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">10.1177_1474474007072817</article-id><article-categories><subj-group subj-group-type="heading"><subject>Articles</subject></subj-group></article-categories><title-group><article-title>Biopolitics and the molecularization of life</article-title></title-group><contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Braun</surname><given-names>Bruce</given-names></name><aff>Department of Geography, University of Minnesota</aff></contrib></contrib-group><pub-date pub-type="ppub"><month>01</month><year>2007</year></pub-date><volume>14</volume><issue>1</issue><fpage>6</fpage><lpage>28</lpage><abstract><p>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.</p></abstract><kwd-group><kwd>Biopolitics</kwd><kwd>biosecurity</kwd><kwd>molecularization</kwd><kwd>Nikolas Rose</kwd></kwd-group><custom-meta-wrap><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>sagemeta-type</meta-name><meta-value>Journal Article</meta-value></custom-meta><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>search-text</meta-name><meta-value> Biopolitics and the molecularization of life Bruce Braun Department of
Geography, University of Minnesota 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. Keywords: Biopolitics m biosecurity m
molecularization m Nikolas Rose When Spinoza ways we do not know what a body can do,
this is practically a war cry. (Gilles Deleuze)1 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? In his essay 'The politics of life itself', Nikolas Rose gives us one
answer.2 With advances in molecular biology, genetics and biochemistry, he argues, we
have come to understand the body in terms of its genetic inheritance, with important
implications for how we are governed and the ways in which we govern ourselves.3 Like
his colleague Sarah Franklin, and the anthropologist Paul Rabinow (who uses slightly
different terminology Á biosociality Á to understand similar practices of bodily
self-regulation and management), Rose understands this to entail a shift within the
biopolitical regimes of modernity, from political rationalities directed toward the
management of risk at the level of populations to the individual management of the
genetic risks peculiar to one's own body, or what he calls 'ethopolitics'.4 There is
much to admire in Rose's formulation. On the one hand, he eschews the sort of
conservative reactions to technological change that are based on notions of an essential
human nature, or that rely on a sharp distinction between the biological and # 2007 SAGE
Publications 10.1177/1474474007072817 cultural geographies 2007 14: 6Á28 the
technological body. For Rose, like others writing in posthumanist traditions, bodies are
composite entities, at once biological, technological and political. Hence, recent
advances in genetics and biotechnology do not register a decisive break with a prior
human essence; they partially constitute what it means to live our humanity today. To
use familiar terms, they are part of the ongoing history that is our 'species being',
and open possibilities for new 'forms of life' in the future.5 Like others working in
this tradition, Rose also recognizes that technological advances in biomedicine have
transformed social identities, given rise to new forms of political association, and
opened new circuits of capital. Indeed, as numerous commentators have noted, in the wake
of new reproductive technologies, stem cell research and other biotechnological
advances, there have emerged countless new forms of 'genetic citizenship', by which
individuals and groups have made their biological existence a matter of ethical concern
and a basis for political action.6 In important respects Rose's analysis of
ethopolitics, and the rapidly expanding literature that explores the impact of
biomedicine and biotechnology through the lens of governmentality, has become the
dominant story about how life has been brought into law and politics in the molecular
age. But do these accounts fully exhaust how the relation between our biological
existence and our political existence is lived today? While it is certainly true that
molecular biology, genetics and biochemistry have spatialized our bodies in novel ways
and, in conjunction with shifts in governance, have transformed our ethical and
political relations to them, is ethopolitics the only game in town? Perhaps better, for
whom is the molecular age an ethopolitical age that is defined and experienced primarily
as a matter of choice and the individual management of risk? Despite the appeal of
Rose's powerful account of ethopolitics, there may be reasons to read it with caution,
from his somewhat limited account of how the body has been 'molecularized' and the
political rationalities subsequently arrayed around it, to his complete erasure of
sovereign power in favour of what he sees as pervasive forms of pastoral power. This
paper calls both of these into question. On the one hand, I will argue that Rose relies
on a singular and somewhat simplistic account of what has transpired with the rise of
molecular biology and genetics; namely, that the body has come to be figured in terms of
a genetic code that belongs to the individual alone Á its own 'proper', so to speak,
which is both its own property, and that which forms the basis for its life. For Rose,
the individual self and the genetic body coincide; the body is conceived as a bounded
entity whose molecular existence is internal to it (albeit open to technological
modification), and ethics and politics come to focus on the relation between the
molecular self as it exists in the present and its possible biotechnological futures.
Yet this is hardly the only way that molecular biology knows bodies. Alongside the
genomic body, and at times overlapping with it, can be found another, post- genomic body
which is also understood at the molecular scale, but considered instead in terms of its
displacement within wider molecular fields. From this perspective, bodies are understood
less in terms of their intrinsic genetic essence Á the fantasy of one's genetic code
carried around on a CD Á and more in terms of a global economy of exchange and
circulation, where the body is thrown into a chaotic and unpredictable molecular world
filled with emergent yet unspecifiable risks. Far from a stable 7 Braun: Biopolitics and
the molecularization of life molecular life internal to the bounded body, to be managed
and potentially improved, this account gives us a precarious body immersed in what
Bernard Vallat, Director General of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), has
called the 'great biological cauldron' of the twenty-first century, where biology is
virtuality, and where the future is less about 'care of the self' than it is about
imminent catastrophe.7 This molecularized body, I will argue, has become the site of
very different political rationalities, gathered around the concept of 'security', which
find no place in Rose's ethopolitical account of the molecular age. Rather than accept a
simple and singular account of the molecular age in which biopolitics morphs into
ethopolitics, I will ask whether, under the sign of biology-as-virtuality, it may be
necessary to trace the ways that biopolitics has merged with geopolitics, and the
government of 'life' has revealed itself to be intimately related to the exercise and
extension of sovereign power. We are perhaps left not with opposed understandings of how
our biological existence is related to our political existence Á one that draws on
notions of governmentality, and another that focuses on sovereignty Á but with the task
of understanding how the two are related. From biopolitics to ethopolitics: intrinsic
molecularization and the individual management of risk For Spinoza no one can tell what
the body is capable of from simply observing the laws of nature. (Keith Ansell-Pearson)8
Let me turn first to Rose's account of ethopolitics. The key point of reference for Rose
is clearly the work of Michel Foucault. Foucault argued that in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries political power came to interest itself less in decisions over life
and death, or control over territory Á the traditional concerns of the sovereign prince
Á and more with the management of 'life', that is, with ordering and enhancing the vital
or productive processes of human existence.9 While Foucault used the general term
'biopower' to designate those new forms of power that took the capacities of bodies and
conduct of individuals as their concern, he at times distinguished between two more
specific forms. He used the term 'anatomo-politics', for instance, for those
disciplinary techniques that sought to maximize the body's forces and integrate it into
efficient systems, such as through proper training, or through rationally organizing
workplaces, armies and domestic economies. The term 'biopolitics', on the other hand,
designated those political technologies that took the biological existence of the nation
as their object, understood as a 'population' imbued with mechanisms of life Á birth,
morbidity, mortality, longevity, vitality Á and knowable in terms of statistical norms.
Examples of the latter included public health, town planning and hygienics, each of
which conjoined state science (demography, vital statistics, administration) with forms
of self-regulation to bring about the normalization of life processes.10 Whether or not
this resulted in the replacement of sovereign power (power to take life or let live) by
more dispersed forms of disciplinary or pastoral power (power 8 cultural geographies
14(1) to make live or let die) has become widely debated, but these debates seem to
concern Rose less than the possibility that Foucault's account of biopolitics has become
horribly outdated.11 As Rose puts it, 'the truth regimes of the life sciences have
mutated' and with these changes 'biopolitics has merged with ethopolitics'.12 Rose's
description of these mutations is worth quoting at length, since it forms the basis for
all that follows: The body that 20th century medicine inherited from the 19th century
was visualized via a clinical gaze, as it appeared in the hospital, on the dissection
table and inscribed in the anatomical atlas. The body was a vital living system, or a
system of systems. The skin enclosed a 'natural' volume of functionally interconnected
organs, tissues, functions, controls, feedbacks, reflexes, rhythms, circulations and so
forth. This unified clinical body was located within a social body made up of
extra-corporeal systems Á of environment, of culture Á also conceptualized in terms of
large scale-flows Á of air, water, sewage, germs, contagion, familial influences, moral
climates and the like. Eugenic strategies took their character from this way of linking
the individual and the social body. The genetic body differs on all counts from this
eugenic body. Most notably, it is conceived on a different scale. In the 1930s, biology
came to visualize life phenomena at the submicroscopic region Á between 10(6 and 10(7
cm. Life, that is to say, was molecularized. This molecularization was not merely a
matter of the framing of explanations at the molecular level. Nor was it simply a matter
of the use of artifacts fabricated at the molecular level. It was a reorganization of
the gaze of the life sciences, their institutions, procedures, instruments, spaces of
operation and forms of capitalization. . . . Life was imagined as sub-cellular processes
and events, controlled by a genome which is neither diagram nor blueprint but a digital
code written on the molecular structure of the chromosome. This is 'the language of
life' that contains 'the digital instructions' that make us what we are.13 In other
words, when it comes to how we understand biological life today, molecular biology and
genetics have replaced physics and chemistry, and with this shift we have witnessed new
ways of conceiving and acting upon bodies. Later we may have reason to question whether
such a sharp epochal shift has occurred, and whether the body is 'molecularized' today
in such a singular fashion and with such singular effects. Here we need only note that
Rose's position has become commonplace in the social sciences and humanities today. As
the story is usually told, with such things as DNA diagnostic tools, automated
gene-sequencing computers and data-mining and gene-discovery software, we can at once
encode, recode and decode biological materials, translating 'wet' DNA (physical
samples), for instance, into 'dry' DNA (information), which can subsequently be
manipulated and ultimately reas- sembled in a form that may not be the same at the end
of the process as at the beginning.14 For some writers this encoding, recoding and
decoding has allowed for ever lighter links between biology and capital, as biological
matter is translated into mobile and fluid networks of information that can be owned,
bought and sold as intellectual property.15 For Rose, on the other hand, the most
significant effects of this shift appear to be found in how we understand and govern
bodies and its possibilities. Gene therapy treatments Á the novel idea that we can
actively transform the genetic material in a living being Á and nanotechnologies Á the
construction of organic and non-organic objects, molecule by molecule Á are seen to give
us a biological body which is understood less in terms of fate and more in terms of the
management and pre-emption of risks, even as something that can potentially be improved.
In Rose's words, 9 Braun: Biopolitics and the molecularization of life Life now appears
to be open to shaping and reshaping at the molecular level: by precisely calculated
interventions that prevent something happening, alter the way something happens, [or]
make something new happen in the cellular processes themselves. The result is that our
ethical relation to our bodies has changed: Dilemmas about what we are, what we are
capable of, what we may hope for, now have a molecular form16 . Translated into the
language of biopolitics, Rose argues that it is increasingly our corporeality Á 'life
itself' Á and not just our conduct which has become subject to what Foucault called
'technologies of self'. Ethopolitics, then, is the name Rose gives to this new
ethical-political relation to our bodies, which are now defined in terms of open-ended
futures. But there is more to Rose's account than merely a shift in the target of
political rationalities from the behaviour of bodies to their actual make-up; for Rose,
ethopolitics also relates to crucial changes in the relation between the individual and
the state. Rose develops this point in response to critics of biotechnology, for whom
the molecularization of life is inescapably haunted by eugenics. With our newfound
capacity to diagnose genetic conditions in embryos, for instance, we can now make
choices about whether to continue a pregnancy, or to accept an embryo for implantation
in IVF therapies, based upon the knowledge of future risks. For a number of critics this
has raised the unsettling possibility of political rationalities directed toward
eliminating 'taints or weaknesses' in populations, based on some bodies being calculated
to have less biological worth than others. This discomfort should come as little
surprise; as we are all too aware from events in the twentieth century, biopolitics,
defined as the care of life, can just as readily invest in the life of the collective
body through purging 'defective' bodies as through improving, training or selecting
'healthy' ones.17 It is partly in response to these anxieties that Rose spells out his
account of a historical shift from a biopolitics of populations to an ethopolitics
characterized by the individual management of the 'somatic' self. While he readily
agrees that political rationalities are still organized around risks to health, he
claims that the nature of these political rationalities has changed in such a way that
eugenics is no longer the threat it once was. Biopolitical practices in the past, he
argues, were directed toward improving the national stock, and took two forms which
contained the potential for eugenics: hygienics, which was concerned with maximizing the
health and productive powers of the national body in the present; and the regulation of
reproduction, which was concerned with improving the national stock by eliminating risks
to its wellbeing in the future. These were matters of concern for state policy, as well
as for individuals who understood their biological lives (and the lives of their
children) in terms of an ethical responsibility to the national body, thus blurring the
boundaries between coercive and voluntary eugenics. The present age, Rose argues, is
markedly different. To begin with, it is not at all apparent that we are still in an age
where the state seeks to take charge of 'the lives of each in the name of the destiny of
all'.18 In other words, for Rose the idea that the state should coordinate and manage
the affairs of all sectors of society Á that it should attach importance to the
'fitness' of the national body en masse Á has fallen into disrepute, 10 cultural
geographies 14(1) since the question of 'fitness' is no longer framed in terms of a
struggle between national populations, but instead posed in economic terms, such as the
cost of days off from work that are caused by ill health. Hence, when it comes to
national health, the state seeks to 'enable' or 'facilitate' the health of individuals,
rather than govern bodies in any direct way. The difference between 'old' eugenics and
what some have today labelled 'liberal' eugenics, then, can be seen as the difference
between state-led programmes that in the past sought to produce a particular population
with particular traits and capabilities, and the ethical decisions of individuals in the
present, who are exercising 'choice' in reproductive matters. Although forms of pastoral
power clearly shape these reproductive choices, the state remains neutral. For Rose,
this is a crucial difference, and symptomatic of a larger shift, whereby health is
increasingly a matter of individual rather than state responsibility and citizens are
asked to take responsibility for securing their own wellbeing, through such things as
purchasing private health insurance, being informed citizens, actively investigating
health conditions, joining with others in support groups, contributing to lobby groups
and seeking genetic counselling. It is here, at the intersection of the molecularization
of life with the individualization of risk, that Rose locates ethopolitics as the
dominant biopolitical regime of the present. Within such a biopolitical order, he
argues, individuals are presented with new ways of rendering their bodies to themselves
in thought and language, making judgements about them, and ultimately acting upon them,
whether these decisions are based on DNA samples from amniotic fluid, in the case of
reproductive health, or susceptibility to Alzheimer's, due to the presence or absence of
particular genes. Thus, the individual who 'takes responsibility for her health' is at
the same time the individual who thinks her body through its 'genetic inheritance', an
inheritance to be managed wisely or potentially improved. This government of the genetic
self is thus decidedly not about following general programmes, aimed at the population
at large, but about under- standing and making wise choices about the risks that are
peculiar to one's self. Risk becomes 'individualized'; the individual becomes
'intrinsically somatic'; and ethical practices 'increasingly take the body as a key site
for work on the self'19 . Within the social sciences and humanities this formulation of
the biopolitical present predominates, as is evident in a great deal of work on the
social and cultural aspects of biomedicine and biotechnology. From anthropologists and
sociologists, for example, we learn that the molecularization of life and the
individualization of risk have given rise to new forms of identity and sociality around
disease and risk.20 Individuals are said to increasingly recognize the 'self' as the
bearer of this or that genetic risk, around which daily routines and future plans must
be prudently organized. Likewise, researchers have begun to attend to the myriad of ways
that our genetic lives are lived, and ethical decisions about 'life itself' are made,
within complex networks of activists, scientists, doctors, politicians and corporate
interests that are clustered around particular 'risks'.21 In many of these accounts the
Internet looms large, providing novel possibilities for the sharing of biomedical
knowledge and life experience among lay advocates, scientists and clinicians, and for
forging translocal communities around particular genetic identities.22 These new
de-territorialized 'body-geographies' can be seen to challenge local cultures of health
and local etiologies of disease, while also 11 Braun: Biopolitics and the
molecularization of life providing space for the proliferation of alternative
body-knowledges, or for the emergence and organization of new demands on state and
capital by individuals and collectives. For Rose and Novas, such practices provide
further evidence of the 'making up' of the biological citizen from below, rather than
the shaping of citizens by the disciplinary power of the state.23 We should not take
this to mean that power relations are absent from ethopolitics. Indeed, one of the
crucial questions to emerge from Rose's account is precisely what it means to 'exercise
choice' in the self-management of the body. What defines choice? And who is this
ethopolitical subject who understands their body in such terms? Drawing upon Dean's
discussion of the formation of neo-liberal subjects, we might begin with an initial
observation that with the shift to private health insurance and away from the
providential state we are in a sense compelled to be subjects who 'make choices' about
our health.24 As Deborah Heath, Rayna Rapp and Karen-Sue Taussig put it, we are asked to
be good genetic citizens, which is to say that we are obliged to wisely manage our own
lives through exercising choice.25 In the absence of other options for securing health,
such as those provided by a providential state, we must make our biological life our
life's work. But this presents us with a further range of problems. On the one hand we
are faced with growing populations Á undocumented workers, the working poor Á who are
excluded from this ethopolitical order; that is, those who are denied the political
right to health, or who lack the resources that might enable them to 'choose' Á in
short, who cannot be the neo-liberal subjects that Rose presupposes. For these subjects
the biological self is a precarious entity Á bare life, exposed to death Á rather than
an object for personal reconstruction. On the other hand, we find that as soon as we
look carefully at the social and medical field in which the 'somatic' self exercises
choice, we find it delimited by numerous parameters: not only traversed by countless
forms of pastoral power Á all those 'professionals of vitality', counsellors, therapists
and ethicists, not to mention geneticists and physicians, who are there to guide our
decisions Á but shaped by what Catherine Waldby has called the production of
'biovalue'.26 Indeed, if molecular biology and genetics have reconfigured the body in
terms of information, and if the ethical care of the self occurs within this field of
informatics, then the question arises of what sort of bioinformation is being produced,
to what end, and for whom. It is no secret that the driving force behind bioinformatics
today is finance capital, such that the future of any given field of research, the
sequencing of this or that genome, or the data-mining of this or that genomic database,
more often than not, flourishes or perishes depending on stock values, and those stock
values in turn are tied to the actual Á or proclaimed Á successes or failures of
research results. Moreover, research is most likely to occur if results can be
transformed into products (genetic- based drugs or therapies, for instance), or if it
can be mobilized as part of some product development pipeline. Not just anyone can
participate in building this informational field, despite the organizing of advocacy
groups and online medical communities. As Eugene Thacker notes, life at the molecular
level is only knowable through complex and expensive apparatuses Á electron microscopes,
ultracentrifuges and x-ray diffraction Á and through the expensive, computer-driven
analysis of genebanks. The development 12 cultural geographies 14(1) of cures and
preventive practices is exorbitantly expensive, and inaccessible to non- specialists.27
And the patenting of bio-information means that the right to use such information is
constrained by property and law. Not only does this modern day form of enclosure mean
that the field of 'choice' is circumscribed, but biotechnology's high capitalization and
specialization means that immense challenges stand in the way of any sort of informed
critique and public debate. As Rose notes, Foucault famously argued that 'medical
thought [has been] fully engaged in the philosophical status of man.'28 If so, the
philosophical status of the human is shaped today as much by the calculations of
entrepreneurs as by the decisions of researchers, doctors or patients. Not only does
this point out the bankruptcy of much of what travels as 'bioethics' Á a professional
field which always seems to arrive too late, after biomedicine, biotechnology and
finance capital have ushered in the future, and thus can act only to incorporate new
biotechnological realities within law Á it also suggests limits for the sort of
generalized governmentality, or 'self-management', that Rose assumes defines our
biological existence today, for it becomes impossible to reduce the biopolitical field
to the actions of citizens alternately empowered or ensnared in webs of pastoral power.
This does not mean that Rose's account is without merit, or that it fails to cast light
on meaningful questions about how individuals negotiate their biological lives in the
molecular age. To the extent that the biological lives of affluent members of Western
societies have come to be understood in terms of ethopolitics, where the
molecularization of life coincides with the individualization of risk, the politics of
'life itself' has increasingly come to turn on a set of ethical questions about what a
body can do, and a set of political questions surrounding how the body's capacities can
be increased, such as through the recognition of certain genetic conditions or the
establishment of institutional forms and legal frameworks that might enable individuals
to maximize their genetic potential. Indeed, although he doesn't put it in these terms,
Rose's account brings us face to face with the question of democracy; for if 'being' has
neither fixed form nor determined end, and if what it means to live our humanity is the
outcome of politics rather than something given in advance, then it would seem that our
most pressing need is for a political order that corresponds to this new corporeal
order, where the flourishing of life, and the technoscientific practices that facilitate
it, is not determined by rates of return on investments, or constrained by law, property
and nation, but is open to an ontological and ethical play beyond the current
integration of life and law.29 Biology, virtuality, security: extrinsic molecularization
and the geopolitics of 'life' Bodies-in-formation betray a virtual potential towards
becoming dangerous and so our politics of security are progressively becoming a virtual
security politics. (Michael Dillon)30 13 Braun: Biopolitics and the molecularization of
life The concept of ethopolitics gives us a powerful way to think about
ethical-political projects of self-formation in the molecular age. But is Rose's genomic
body the only form that the molecularized body takes today? And is ethopolitics the only
game in town? Or, stated differently, is political power in the molecular age primarily
pastoral in nature? Two aspects of Rose's account of mutations in the truth regimes of
the life sciences bear further scrutiny. The first is his faith in epistemic shifts. For
Rose, the genetic body of the twenty-first century 'differs on all counts' from the
clinical or eugenic body of the nineteenth century. But does it? Can such a bold
proclamation of a new epoch be sustained? The second has to do with how Rose imagines
that the body has been 'molecularized'. While it may be true that we now visualize life
phenomena at the submicroscopic level, is the biological life of the body conceptualized
only in terms of one's 'genetic inheritance' and its technological improvement? Is the
body really the bounded and autonomous entity that Rose makes it out to be, constituted
only in terms of an internal genetic essence that is its own 'proper', and that contains
its future within it?31 While it may be true that in industrialized liberal democracies
this model of the 'somatic' self holds sway, there is another dimension to the
molecularization of life that has received far less attention. This has to do with the
conceptualization of the body in terms of its displacement within wider molecular
fields. That is, at the same time that molecular biology and genetics have given us a
body known at the molecular scale, and thus made the physical mechanisms of 'life'
available to political and economic calculation in new ways, they have also, in
conjunction with the science of immunology and virology, given us another way to
conceive of our biological existence, no longer in terms of a self-contained body whose
genetic inheritance is to be managed and improved, but in terms of a body embedded in a
chaotic and unpredictable molecular world, a body understood in terms of a general
economy of exchange and circulation, haunted by the spectre of newly emerging or still
unspecifiable risks.32 For every story in the US media that speaks breathlessly of
advances in stem cell research and gene therapy, or that worries over the 'post-human'
futures these might usher into being, we find two or three other stories that speak
ominously of migrating birds and backyard chickens, and that mix together Vietnamese
peasants, influenza viruses and homeland security. This conjunction of biopolitics and
geopolitics, of the molecularized body and the question of biosecurity, finds no place
in Rose's ethopolitics, but merits equally close attention. By tracing its tangled
threads, we may find ourselves faced with very different political rationalities, no
longer framed in terms of the governmentalization of 'life itself', but in terms of the
extension of forms of sovereign power by which life is ever more tightly integrated with
law. Before turning to these, we should note that there is a long history of thinking
the body in terms of exchange and circulation, well documented by historians and
epidemiologists. During the plague epidemics of the fourteenth century, for instance,
'public health' involved the quarantining of people and goods suspected of harbouring
infectious diseases. Urban renewal campaigns of the early twentieth century under- stood
disease to be spread through food, water and waste, and today the ongoing AIDS 14
cultural geographies 14(1) pandemic has brought renewed attention to the porosity of
human bodies. There is an equally long history of public health linked explicitly to
security. As Nicholas King notes, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the United
States began during the Second World War as an effort to investigate and control
infections among soldiers, and to keep malaria from spreading to the armed forces from
its 'reservoir' in the civilian population of occupied countries.33 From its inception,
then, public health has taken the body to be a geopolitical body. Yet in important
respects the present moment is more than bare repetition. Two developments hold
particular significance. On the one hand we are witness to a set of geographical and
historical transformations that have come to be discussed under the rubric of
'globalization'. These are commonly taken to include the liberalization of markets, the
unprecedented mobility of capital and goods, the extension of global supply chains, the
transformation of ecosystems and the growth of international travel and tourism. Within
these accounts, the present moment is understood in terms of the collapse of space and
time (or the 'folding' of topological space-time). On the other hand, molecular biology,
in conjunction with virology and immunology, has given us ways of conceptualizing bodies
in terms of their molecular geographies Á in terms of networks and pathways, movements
and exchanges Á with the sort of detail and complexity unimaginable in fourteenth
century Venice, or at the time of Typhoid Mary, or even during the influenza pandemic of
1918. In what follows I propose that one way we can understand the recent emergence of
'biosecurity' as a political concern is to acknowledge that it corresponds to a
particular way in which the molecularized body has been apprehended within
globalization.34 Stated in slightly different terms, we might propose that, in contrast
to 'ethopolitics', which names a form of neoliberal governmentality that comes into
being at the intersection of the molecularization of life and the individualization of
risk, 'biosecurity' today names a set of political responses within globalization that
take the unpredictability of molecular life Á its 'virtuality' or 'waywardness' Á as
their own justification, and in such a way that 'security' appears the only viable
political response. We can explore this proposition further by reference to the current
avian influenza scare. HPAI, or highly pathogenic avian influenza, is the name given by
virologists to a number of influenza A viruses that cause high mortality and morbidity,
both in animal populations (especially domestic poultry) and among infected humans. Of
most concern today is a particular type of HPAI virus known as H5N1, the most recent in
a series of 'emerging infectious diseases' that have received growing attention since
the mid-1990s. From molecular immunology we learn that viruses consist of genetic
material encased in surface proteins that stick out from the viral envelope (see Figure
1). Hemagglutinin (HA) proteins determine how, and whether, a virus can penetrate human
cells. Once in a cell the virus can replicate. Neuraminidase (NA) proteins determine the
exit strategy, i.e. whether the replicated viral matter can escape the cell to infect
other cells. Viruses are named on the basis of these proteins. The designation H5N1,
then, corresponds to the type of HA and NA proteins found in the virus. Among influenza
A viruses there are believed to exist 16 HA subtypes and 15 Braun: Biopolitics and the
molecularization of life 9 NA subtypes. Of the 16 known HA subtypes, all are thought to
infect birds while only some are known to infect humans. Except in rare cases, H5
viruses do not infect humans. It is even more rare for an H5 virus to be transmitted
from one human to another. As we hear repeatedly, however, the problem with influenza
viruses is that they mutate at an alarming rate. Such transformations are caused by
changes to the viral genome, which is segmented into 8 separate RNA molecules and
thought to mutate in two ways. Genetic drift refers to a slow process of mutation that
occurs as viruses replicate. Genetic shift refers to the much more rapid reassortment of
genes that is thought to occur when different viruses come into contact with each other,
such as when an H5N1 virus and a H3N2 virus are found in the same host. Changes to the
genome are of great significance, virologists believe, because they can result in
changes to the HA and NA proteins.35 The mutation of HPAI viruses are said to have two
potential outcomes of great significance for humans. Genetic reassortment, and
accompanying changes to HA proteins, can potentially change the transmissibility of a
virus, giving it the capacity to infect new hosts. Mutation can also change the
virulence of the virus, and thus affect morbidity and mortality rates in the infected
population. The widely reported worry is that with the right kind of mutation, H5N1
could mutate into a virulent form that is transmissible between humans, plunging the
world into a catastrophic global pandemic. For our purposes, what is of interest in the
story of H5N1 is less the accuracy of biomolecular immunology's account of viral
mutation, or the probability of whether a pandemic will occur (for reasons that will
soon become clear, the latter is a matter of speculation rather than prediction) than
how this understanding of molecular life, and FIGURE 1 Image of 'shift and drift'
presented in testimony to Congress by Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of National Institute
of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, United States
Department of Health and Human Services, on 2 March 2006. Available at: http://
www3.niaid.nih.gov/about/directors/congress/default.htm 16 cultural geographies 14(1)
the discourse of 'emerging infectious diseases' that has emerged with it, has
transformed our understanding of our own biological existence and given rise to new
forms of political rationality. We can begin with the simple observation that with
increased focus on such things as avian flu, the ebola virus, mad cow disease and other
zoonotic diseases, molecular life has been recoded as inherently unpredictable, as
always, in a sense, 'uncanny'. Human life, in turn, is understood to be thrown into, or
exposed to, this molecular world of chaotic change. Far from a self-contained body with
a clear genetic code Á the fantasy of the essential 'self' stored as information on a CD
Á what we find in the medical and political discourse of 'emerging infectious diseases'
is a body that is radically open to the world, thrown into the flux of an inherently
mutable molecular life where reassortment is not what we control, but what we fear. This
post-genomic world is not understood in terms of one's genetic inheritance Á nor is it
primarily about 'care of the self' or 'genetic citizenship' Á it is instead understood
in terms of a global economy of circulation and exchange that at once precedes and
transcends the individual body. By this account, biomolecular life is not governed by
fixed taxonomies or known in terms of genetic essences; it is instead a dynamic world
characterized by ever novel combinations, where entities jump between bodies and cross
between species, and where 'life itself' continuously confronts us with the new and the
unknown. The philosopher Brian Massumi has succinctly captured the temporal and
affective dimensions of this epistemic shift: Viral or environmental . . . these
faceless, unseen and unseeable enemies operate on an inhuman scale. The enemy is not
simply indefinite (masked or at a hidden location). In the infinity of its
here-and-to-come, it is elsewhere, by nature. It is humanly ungraspable. It exists in a
different dimension of space from the human, and in a different dimension of time. . . .
The pertinent enemy question is not who, where, when, or even what. The enemy is a what
not; an unspecifiable may-come-to-pass, in another dimension. In a word, the enemy is
virtual.36 For Massumi the 'virtual' has a precise meaning, taken from Henri Bergson and
Gilles Deleuze. It refers not to a nonexistent or immaterial entity, as in popular
usage, but to a potentiality that is immanent in every object and in every situation.
Unlike the 'possible', which is opposed to the real, the virtual is real, which is to
say that it exists as concretely in the present. It is immaterial yet real, abstract yet
concrete, a 'future to come' that is already with us, but which remains ungraspable. To
relate this to H5N1, we might say that the virtual has to do with all the potential
mutations that could occur, given what the virus presently is, and the heterogeneous
associations into which it may enter. This molecular future is immanent in the present,
although it cannot be known in advance.37 What is the significance of recoding molecular
life in terms of virtuality? Most immediately, it transforms our relation to the future,
which is in a sense already with us. This biological future is radically open, of the
same nature as a throw of the dice, full of surprises and unexpected forms.38 Yet, as
evident in the discourse of 'emerging infectious diseases', this future can also be
defined in terms of the imminence of a generalized, yet nondescript catastrophe. As bird
flu 'expert' Michael Osterholm is fond of putting it in 17 Braun: Biopolitics and the
molecularization of life relation to the next pandemic: 'it's not if, but when.'39 The
present is populated by unknown and unknowable risks; we don't know what comes next, but
it could be bad. It is not difficult to see how the virtuality of molecular life can be
articulated with fear and dread. Nor does it take much imagination to see how an
understanding of globalization, which frames the present in terms of the collapse of
time and space, might further augment this sense of biological terror. As food networks
become increasingly complex and global, this story goes, the molecular geographies that
constitute our biological existence are changing in both speed and scale. Air travel is
likewise said to give 'biological emergence' new urgency, as planes cross between
continents far quicker than the incubation period for many pathogens. To borrow language
from the medical anthropologist Nicholas King, the lesson that we were all asked to
learn from the SARS crisis of 2003 was that networks were dangerous: through a specific
configuration of live animal markets, migration and air travel, the biological existence
of people in Singapore and Toronto had become intimately connected in 'real time' to the
lives of wild bats and civet cats in China.40 The articulation of biology-as- virtuality
with globalization, then, is said to raise the level of urgency and uncertainty; in this
fearsome new world of global networks, dangerous fragments circulate and recombine in
novel ways, threatening our bodies and identities. We are now told that the unruly
movements of animals are part of the problem, for the problem isn't just that molecular
life 'shifts' and 'drifts', or that transportation technologies and global trade have
collapsed space and time, but that birds fly (see Figure 2). As was widely reported in
western media, it is widely suspected that at least some wild birds have the capacity to
carry HPAI without showing symptoms.41 To use the familiar epidemiological metaphor,
wild birds compose a 'silent reservoir' of viruses Á a faceless, unseen and unseeable
enemy Á where the distinction between friend and enemy is rendered indistinct. Indeed,
the metaphor of 'reservoir' is too static for this world of emergence; because birds
migrate, they form 'uncanny' reservoirs that disperse and move about: now in China, then
in Turkey, now mixing with these flocks, now with those, forming amorphous transnational
networks that respect no borders and that are visible only in their effects. It is not
difficult to see how this view of molecular life might be taken up in a political
register. Although he did not have birds in mind, Donald Rumsfeld in 2003 captured
brilliantly what was at stake in a world of virtual risks. As he put it in the context
of the 'war on terror': There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don't know we don't know.42 In
a similar way, biology-as-virtuality comes to matter Á politically and economically Á in
terms of emergence and its unpredictable spatio-temporalities; that is, in terms of
those biological 'unknown unknowns' that in an age of globalization could appear from
anywhere, and threaten to bring about catastrophic effects, a point driven home to
Congress in 2004 by Anthony Fauci, director of NIAID, who presented the world in terms
of a complex cartography of 'emergence' (see Figure 3).43 18 cultural geographies 14(1)
In important respects 'biosecurity' names an answer to the problem of the mutability and
unpredictability of biological life within a political-economic order that is premised
upon global economic integration. But biosecurity in practice may be more difficult than
it may appear: how does one bring the 'unspecifiable' future-to-come within the realm of
economic and political calculation? By definition the virtual is incalculable. No
algorithm can exhaust its possibilities. Nor can it be incorporated into the
probabilistic calculations of insurance. As Melinda Cooper notes, when biology comes to
be known in terms of 'emergence' the future can only be 'speculative' and political
calculation must become 'future-invocative', actively intervening within the disorder of
biological life in order to produce a desired future.44 Today, security's principal
answer to the problem of 'unknown unknowns' is the speculative act of pre-emption, which
takes as its target potential rather than actual risks. Cooper argues that these
'speculative biological futures' have become an important basis for the integration of
biomedicine and defence in the United States, including the re-emergence of biological
weapons research.45 What interests me here, however, are the ways in which the
future-invocative act of biological pre-emption is played out globally in a geopolitical
register, in ways that extend forms of sovereign power. We can trace this across a
variety of practices, beginning with the multiplication and expansion of surveillance
networks, which in recent years have increased in number, scale and complexity. These
include 'early warning' systems whose objective is to identify and contain 'outbreaks'
before they threaten the security of either the state or commerce. Many of these are
data-mining operations. The Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN), for
instance, is an Internet-based multilingual early- warning tool that continuously scans
global media sources Á news wires, websites Á for information about disease outbreaks.
ProMED is similar but more extensive, adding reports of diseases among farm animals and
plants to GPHIN's focus on humans. Reports are often contributed by ProMED-mail
subscribers, who act as informal 'eyes FIGURE 2 Global flyways as vectors of
environmental risk. UC Davis Avian Influenza Website,
http://universityofcalifornia.edu/everyday/avianflu/ 19 Braun: Biopolitics and the
molecularization of life and ears' for the network. The goal of these surveillance
networks is nothing less than an unlimited, unending examination of global populations,
tied in turn to rapid response teams administered by the WHO, which arrive at 'hot
spots' within 24 hours to do on-the-spot investigations, confirm diagnoses, help with
patient management and ultimately contain any outbreak.46 These teams carry with them
sophisticated field offices with 'robust' information technology and communications
set-ups (satellite telephones, radio communications, and field video-conferencing
capacity); and, much like the US's global network of military bases, they have
pre-positioned specialized protective equipment and medical supplies located at
strategic sites around the world. All of the above are tied to emerging laboratory
networks that are linked in real time. These laboratory networks Á like the OiE's OFFLU
and the WHO's Global Influenza Programme Á are the diagnostic and research arms of this
integrated system, with collaborating centres that circle the globe. At least in
principle, these collaborating centres agree to share knowledge, disseminate strains,
facilitate the movement of reagents needed for laboratory research, develop databases of
virus genomes through gene sequencing and so on.47 FIGURE 3 Global risks:biology as
virtuality. Image presented in testimony to Congress by Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health,
United States Department of Health and Human Services, on 28 July 2005. Available at:
http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/about/directors/pdf/7-20-2005_slides.pdf 20 cultural
geographies 14(1) When it comes to 'surveillance' the impulse is to rush to judgement,
since the very word connotes the extension and exercise of sovereign power. But such
networks are not necessarily bad in and of themselves; they must be evaluated in terms
of their effects. What are these effects? The first thing to note is perhaps the obvious
point: that these networks are increasingly global in reach. As Nicholas King comments,
we are long past the days of nationally bounded surveillance systems whose goal was to
monitor and protect the population of any particular state. What we are witnessing
instead are familiar techniques of medical surveillance multiplied globally, where the
monitoring of individual bodies in specific places is augmented by the surveillance of
the global population in the de-territorialized space of informatics, databases and the
Internet.48 Today these surveillance networks are being extended to animal popula-
tions, including wildlife, as animals are reclassified as 'biohazards', both to each
other and to humans. The US Department of the Interior, for instance, has begun sampling
migrating birds in the Pacific Flyway, adding to the growing influenza gene bank
maintained by the NIH, and, with the US Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human
Services, has begun an interagency strategic plan for the early detection of HPAI. The
European Union is doing the same, and the UN's FAO, in conjunction with the USGS, has
recently unveiled an ambitious programme that will fit wild birds with tiny backpacks
carrying communication technologies linked to a system of radio beacons and satellites,
in order to collect and disseminate real-time migration data to ecologists, virologists
and epidemiologists around the world.49 While the image is comical, it represents both
the capacity and the desire to extend the unending examination of global populations
across the animal kingdom in order to govern the 'global biological' as a single,
integrated system containing emergent risks. Ultimately, these surveillance systems seek
to manage time and space. On the one hand, they are about early detection and rapid
response, continuously striving to reduce the time between detection, diagnosis and
action in order to contain outbreaks, and to accelerate the production of antivirals and
vaccines needed to protect more distant populations. Analogies to fighting forest fires
abound. At still another level, they are about anticipating the future through the
development of immense gene banks of influenza viruses Á more than 900 at the last count
Á which can be quickly mined for relevant data by corporations, research labs and state
agencies, in the race to discover and patent pharmaceutical solutions. In important
respects, then, these networks presume that the answer to 'biology-as-virtuality' is
technology Á better surveillance, better laboratories, better vaccines Á and their
advocates frame 'emergence' as a logistical problem that demands a technological answer,
rather than as an existential problem that requires a philosophical response, or a
social or an economic problem that demands a political solution. Perhaps most important
for my purposes, these networks involve efforts by states to act extraterritorially.
This geopolitical dimension was made explicit in the August 2003 statement of Tommy
Thompson, the former director of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the United States.
Although it begins by framing health security as a 'humanitarian' concern Á about
'America's mission of compassion abroad' Á it becomes clear that 'health security' is
about something quite different: 21 Braun: Biopolitics and the molecularization of life
As secretary of Health and Human Services it is my privilege to run a department that
performs a critical role in America's mission of compassion abroad. Public health knows
no borders and no politics. In recent memory alone, we have seen AIDS leap from Africa
into our own cities; we have seen severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) spread with
shocking rapidity from southern China to North America; we have seen the West Nile virus
somehow cross the Atlantic and begin a slow spread across our continent; and we have
seen that a key to controlling tuberculosis in the United States is controlling it in
potential visitors to and from abroad.50 It should come as no great surprise that even
in its 'post-Westphalian' manifestation, public health remains a geopolitical exercise
concerned with the sanctity of borders, dangerous migrations and foreign risks. What has
changed under the regime of 'biosecurity' is the geography of health security, for in an
age of globalization it is not enough to protect borders: the fight must be taken 'over
there', before it 'reaches here'. Like the war on terror, amorphous viral networks
require a global strategy of pre- emption. For such a strategy America needs allies:
other countries, and international organizations such as the WHO, FAO and OiE.
Indispensable to our public health efforts, then, is the cooperation, leadership, and
engagement of our partner nations. The United States can lead and contribute to the
cause of global health, but cannot accomplish its mission alone. A prime example of our
cooperation with fellow nations was seen in our response to the SARS epidemic. To fight
this disease, U.S. health officials cooperated with and worked in places like China,
Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam. We swiftly undertook several measures designed
to turn the tide and defeat the epidemic before it became a serious threat on U.S.
soil.51 As the CDC put it in 2000, in an age of global networks, 'it was far more
effective to help other countries control or prevent dangerous diseases at their source
than try to prevent their importation.'52 Thompson's comments remind us that 'security'
Á even in a biological or medical register Á is a geopolitical discourse that
simultaneously names the enemy and is to be protected from it. With this in mind, we may
wish to modify our definition of biosecurity further, as the term given to a set of
political technologies that seek to govern biological disorder in the name of a
particular community, through acts that are extraterritorial. Or, to say this
differently, biosecurity under the auspices of the CDC and HHS retains the ideal of
territoriality while simultaneously seizing on de- territorialization as the solution.53
Indeed, US public health policy, much like its foreign policy, has abandoned isolation
in favour of (forced) integration, premised on the idea that the world can be split into
a 'functioning core' of liberal peace and a 'non- integrated gap' within which emerging
threats must be suppressed.54 Biosecurity is framed in much the same way, as about
penetrating into this gap, and reorganizing it internally so as to minimize risk.55
Indeed, one of the most noted aspects of surveillance networks such as GPHIN is
precisely that they can 'reach into' the sovereign space of other states, gathering
biological and health information from a variety of sources, often informal or
unofficial, and thereby bypass 'uncooperative' states that might otherwise not wish to
share such information.56 While these interventions are frequently posed in terms of
'enlightened self-interest' Á the idea that by acting extraterritorially to achieve
security at home, we benefit others 22 cultural geographies 14(1) too Á it is crucial to
attend carefully to what these 'actions abroad' entail. Most visible in the news media
has been the culling of bird populations, often resisted by local communities who have
much to lose, but encouraged through promises of compensa- tion. Less visible has been
the collection of viral genomes from countries like Vietnam and Indonesia by
institutions like the CDC, resulting in fierce struggles over property rights. Even less
visible have been attempts to reorganize internally social, cultural and biological
practices, what the development industry likes to call 'capacity building'. USAID, for
instance, has begun to put money into improving states' diagnostic capacities and the
integration of local laboratories into global networks.57 Money is also flooding into
creating professional or paraprofessional workers charged with 'moder- nizing'
agricultural practices by reordering village spaces and introducing 'biosecurity'
practices into village life Á essentially 'investing in life through and through' at the
village scale. The WHO, for instance, has printed 'biosecurity' guides for health
workers and development NGOs that outline specific spatial practices targeting so-called
'sector 3' and 'sector 4' livestock, and which arrange different forms of humanÁanimal
association in terms of lowest to highest biosecurity (Figure 4). These efforts to
shrink the 'non-integrated gap' through 'harmonizing' practices raises countless
questions, from the further integration of law with life, to the displacement of local
epistemologies and local etiologies of disease, to the social, cultural and economic
displacements that accompany new husbandry practices. Not surprisingly, such attempts to
enclose the biological life of villages turn on distinctions between the normal and the
pathological, troped as a distinction between the 'modern' and the 'primitive'. Indeed,
over the past year nothing has signified 'backward' more than the image of peasant
children playing with domestic birds, whether alive or dead, the surest sign of the
'premodernity' and 'naivety' of the Third World villager, whose practices are ultimately
a threat to us all. Indeed, newspapers in the United States have been full of stories
about the owners of fighting cocks in Indonesia sucking blood from wounded birds and the
Vietnamese delicacy of blood pudding, while the Turkish press has focused on the
husbandry of Kurdish peasants, who yet again threaten the nation, this time through
their improper relations with animals. Conclusion If security is a political discourse
that justifies new forms of sovereign power by placing the actions of the state
'outside' politics, then biosecurity risks doing much the same, justifying a continuous
state of emergency at the level of political life by reference to a continuous state of
emergence at the level of molecular life. We might conclude, then, that biosecurity
names much more than a set of political technologies whose purpose is to govern the
disorder of biological life; it increasingly names a global project that seeks to
achieve certain biomolecular futures by pre-empting others, and does so in part by
reconfiguring in other places relations between people, and between people and their
animals. Biosecurity weds biopolitics with geopolitics. 23 Braun: Biopolitics and the
molecularization of life We are perhaps now in a position to bring the two halves of
this paper together. 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? For Nikolas Rose, the
molecularization of life has brought us to a new moment in the history of biopolitics,
one in which bodies are understood in terms of their 'genetic inheritance', the
management of risk is individualized, and the make-up of our bodies, and not just their
conduct, has become the subject of technologies of self. In this ethopolitical regime
biopolitics is understood in terms of governmentality, and politics takes as its concern
the recognition of genetic conditions and the mobilizing of resources in their name. But
this is not the only way in which the molecularization of life has been apprehended. If
we attend to the global biopolitics of biosecurity Á the government of the 'global
biological' Á we find a quite different relation between the biological and FIGURE 4
Pre-empting biological risk. Image taken from FAO, Agronomes et Ve´te´rinaires Sans
Frontiee'res (VSF-CICDA), and Department of Animal Health, Socialist Republic of
Vietnam, 'Prevention and control of avian flu in small-scale poultry: a guide for
veterinary paraprofes- sionals in Vietnam'. Available at:
http://www.fao.org/ag.againfo/subjects/documents/ai/AIMa- nual_VN2005(en).pdf. Last
accessed 10 September 2006 24 cultural geographies 14(1) the political. On the one hand,
the 'genetic inheritance' of the 'somatic' self comes to be replaced by 'precarious'
bodies inhabiting 'virtual' biologies. On the other hand, forms of pastoral power recede
while new forms of sovereign power appear. But how are we to understand the relation
between the two? At the very least, we must see Rose's ethopolitics as something more
particular and less universal, as perhaps a form of biopolitics within globalization
that is specific to the zone of 'liberal peace' in the affluent spaces of the West. But
more important, we must ask whether the conditions of possibility for ethopolitics Á for
secure bodies that are open to 'improvement' Á include the extension of sovereign power
elsewhere in the name of biological security. For not only does the global South lie
outside the technoscientific and cultural networks that compose the ethopolitical for
Rose, but arguably biological existence there is increasingly subject to projects that
seek to pre-empt risk through new forms of sovereign power. We are faced with the
troubling thought that in the molecular age, what appears to us in terms of an ethics of
'care of self', and as a pressing problem of democracy, may appear to others as yet
another expression of empire. Acknowledgements This paper was first written as the
Cultural Geographies Annual Lecture and delivered at the Annual Meeting of the
Association of American Geographers in Chicago, March 2006. It has benefited from the
helpful comments of audience members both there and at the School of Anthropology,
Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Melbourne, and the School of
Philosophy at the University of New South Wales. Danielle Meinhardt and Rebecca Wienbar
provided invaluable research assistance. Biographical note Bruce Braun is Associate
Professor of Geography at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. His published works
include The intemperate rainforest: nature, culture and power on Canada's west coast
(Minnesota, 2002), two co-edited books, Remaking reality: nature at the Millennium
(Routledge, 1998) and Social nature: theory, practice, politics (Blackwell, 2001), and
numerous essays on the politics of nature. He is currently working on a study that
examines how understandings of biology-as-virtuality have been taken up in geopolitical
discourses and practices. He can be contacted at: Department of Geography, University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA; email: braun038@umn.edu. Notes 1 G. Deleuze,
Expressionism in philosophy: Spinoza (New York, Zone, 1990 [1968]), p. 255. 2 N. Rose,
'The politics of life itself', Theory, culture and society, 18 (2001), pp. 1Á30. 25
Braun: Biopolitics and the molecularization of life 3 C. Novas and N. Rose, 'Genetic
risk and the birth of the somatic individual', Economy and society, 29 (2000), pp.
485Á513. 4 See S. Franklin, Born and made: an ethnography of pre-implantation genetic
diagnosis (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2006); S. Franklin, C. Lury and J.
Stacey, Global nature, global culture (London, Sage, 2000); P. Rabinow, Essays in the
anthropology of reason (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1997). 5 See E.
Thacker, The global genome: biotechnology, politics and culture (Cambridge, MA, MIT
Press, 2005). 6 See D. Heath, R. Rapp and K. Taussig, 'Genetic citizenship', in D.
Nugent and J. Vincent, eds, A companion to the anthropology of politics (Malden, MA,
Blackwell, 2004), pp. 152Á67; N. Rose and C. Novas, 'Biological citizenship', in A. Ong
and S. Collier, eds, Global assemblages: technology, politics, and ethics as
anthropological problems (Malden, MA, Blackwell, 2004), pp. 439Á63. 7 Vallet made his
comments at the International Symposium on Emerging Zoonoses, Atlanta, 22Á24 Mar. 2006.
8 K. Ansell-Pearson, Germinal life: the difference and repetition of Deleuze (London,
Routledge, 1999), p. 13. 9 M. Foucault, Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison
(New York, Vintage, 1977); M. Foucault, The history of sexuality, vol. 1 (New York,
Pantheon, 1979); M. Foucault, 'Governmentality', in G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P.
Miller, eds, The Foucault effect: studies in governmentality (Chicago, University of
Chicago Press 1991 [1978]), pp. 87Á104. 10 This making a political object of 'life' also
provided means of resistance to techniques of power, often through the language of
'rights'. The 'right' to a healthy body, for instance, emerged as a right in conjunction
with a biopolitical regime that took the health of populations as their concern. That
the language of rights is internal to biopolitics, rather than that which modifies or
contests it from the outside, is certainly one of the most far-reaching conclusions that
emanates from Giorgio Agamben's understanding of sovereign power. See G. Agamben, Homo
Sacer: sovereign power and bare life, trans. by D. Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA, Stanford
University Press, 1998). 11 Giorgio Agamben has famously argued that the production of
the biopolitical body was the 'original activity of sovereign power', and locates this
politicization of biological life as far back as Aristotle's distinction between zoe
(biological life) and bios (political life, or a qualified way of life). In Foucault's
work the relation between biopower and sovereign power was never clearly articulated,
existing as a sort of 'vanishing point' in his writing. Catherine Mills notes that in
History of sexuality, Foucault suggests that sovereignty is replaced by biopower, while
in his essay 'Governmentality', he suggests that discipline, government and sovereignty
coincide historically. See C. Mills, 'Biopolitics, liberal eugenics and nihilism', in S.
DeCaroli and M. Calarco, eds, Sovereignty and life: essays on the work of Giorgio
Agamben (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, forthcoming). 12 Rose, 'The politics
of life itself', pp. 1, 13. 13 Ibid., pp. 13Á14. 14 Thacker, Global genome. 15 C.
Waldby, The visible human project: informatic bodies and posthuman medicine (New York,
Routledge, 2000); Thacker, Global genome. 16 Rose, 'The politics of life itself', pp.
16Á17. 17 Habermas sets out the problem in somewhat different terms, as contradicting
the Enlightenment ideal of autonomy, and thus the ethical self-understanding of the
species. With pre-implantation genetic screening, the child has determined for it its
biological future, with the risk that 'we may 26 cultural geographies 14(1) no longer
see ourselves as ethically free and morally equal beings guided by norms and reason': J.
Habermas, The future of human nature (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2003), p. 41. 18 Rose,
'The politics of life itself', p. 5. 19 Ibid., p. 17. 20 For examples, see Heath et al.,
'Genetic citizenship', pp. 152Á6. 21 See Rose and Novas, 'Biological citizenship'. 22
See H. Parr, 'New body-geographies: the embodied spaces of health and medical
information on the Internet' Environment and planning D: society and space 20 (2002),
pp. 73Á95; Heath et al., 'Genetic citizenship'. Indeed, so important has the Internet
become for the politics of health that how these virtual spaces are constructed and
negotiated by different individuals and social groups, from accreditation organizations
like URAC to individuals and social groups with differing ability to negotiate what is
often a bewildering array of information, is of growing concern. 23 Rose and Novas,
'Biological citizenship'. 24 For Dean, neoliberal governmentality rests on the
production of a particular kind of subject who understands themselves in terms of making
(wise) choices, and thus in terms of individual responsibility. See M. Dean,
Governmentality: power and rule in modern society (Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage, 1999). 25
Heath et al., 'Genetic citizenship'. 26 Waldby, Visible human project. 27 See E.
Thacker, 'Diversity.com/Population.gov', Walker Art Center Web Gallery, http://
www.walkerart.org/archive/5/AF73755568388DC9616B. Accessed 2 Mar. 2006. 28 Quoted in
Rose, 'Politics of life itself', p. 20. 29 For more on this last point, see C. Mills,
'Biopolitics, liberal eugenics and nihilism'. 30 M. Dillon, 'Virtual security: a life
science of (dis)order', Millennium: journal of international studies 32 (2003), p. 531
31 Under the terms of Rose's ontology, 'subjects' are relational, but the 'genetic' body
becomes so only in contact with biotechnology. 32 Post-genomic microbiology not only
suggests that there are much longer 'sequential chains' involved in genetic events but,
as Melinda Cooper notes, it has increasingly posited a 'co- evolution' of humans and
microbes, such that 'We are literally born of ancient alliances between bacteria and our
own cells; microbes are inside us, in our history, but are also implicated in the
continuing evolution of all forms of life on earth': M. Cooper, 'Pre-empting emergence:
the biological turn in the War on Terror', Theory, culture and society, 23 (2006), p.
17. 33 N. King, 'The influence of anxiety: September 11, bioterrorism, and American
public health', Journal of the history of medicine, 58 (2003), pp. 433Á41. 34 Hinchliffe
and Bingham identify three different ways that 'biosecurity' has entered the political
agenda: in terms of invasive species, foodborne illnesses and infectious diseases. Each
of these names a different set of material conditions, and ethical and political
practices. My focus on infectious diseases Á and the political rationalities organized
around it Á is meant to call attention to emergent forms of sovereign power. S.
Hinchliffe and N. Bingham, 'Mapping the mulitiplicities of biosecurity: an
introduction', paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American
Geographers, Chicago, 10 Mar. 2006. 35 Indeed, officials from the WHO believe that there
are multiple 'strains' of H5N1 currently in circulation, with each strain containing HA
and NA proteins with slightly different amino-acid sequences. 27 Braun: Biopolitics and
the molecularization of life 36 B. Massumi, The politics of everyday fear (Minneapolis,
University of Minnesota Press, 1993), p. 11. 37 For more on the virtual, see B. Massumi,
Parables for the virtual: movement, affect, sensation (Durham, NC, Duke University
Press, 2002). 38 See G. Davies, 'The funny business of biotechnology: better living
through comedy', Geoforum (forthcoming). 39 'U.S. bird flu scenario eyed', Associated
Press (21 Sept. 2005). Accessed at http://
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/21/health/main870945.shtml, Feb. 2006. 40 N. King,
'Dangerous fragments', Grey Room 7 (2002), pp. 72-81. See also the collection of essays
in A. Harris and R. Keil, eds, Networked disease (Oxford, Blackwell, forthcoming). 41
This is a highly contested claim, criticized by some for deflecting attention from
industrial agriculture. 42 Rumsfeld first made these comments at a Defense Department
briefing on 12 Feb. 2002. 43 NIAID is the acronym for the National Institute of
Allergies and Infectious Diseases, a branch of the NIH. 44 Cooper, 'Pre-empting
emergence'; see also Dillon, 'Virtual security'. 45 See K. Zeese, 'Return of the petri
dish warriors', Counterpunch (1 June 2006). 46 For further discussion, see N. King,
'Security, disease, commerce: ideologies of postcolonial global health', Social studies
of science, 32 (2002), pp. 763Á789. 47 These networks have been limited by conflicts
over intellectual property, with the USA, and the CDC in particular, receiving
considerable blame for failing fully to share information. Other countries Á Indonesia
in particular Á have worried about neocolonial forms of bioprospecting and genetic
enclosure around infectious disease research. 48 See King, 'Security, disease,
commerce'. 49 The FAOÁUSGS programme began during summer 2006 with wild swans moving
between Mongolia and Eurasia. See 'Satellites help scientists track migratory birds',
FAO Newsroom. http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000388/index.html, accessed 10
Sept. 2006. 50 Emphasis added. T. Thompson, 'Public health knows no borders', U.S.
Foreign Policy Agenda 8 (2003).
http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itps/0803/ijpe/pj81thompson.htm, Accessed 19 Jan. 2006.
51 Ibid. Emphasis added. 52 Quoted in King, 'Security, disease, commerce'. 53 For more
on this, see ibid. 54 See T. Barnett, 'The ''core'' and the ''gap''', Providence
journal-bulletin (7 Nov. 2003); see also S. Roberts, A. Secor and M. Sparke, 'Neoliberal
geopolitics', Antipode 35 (2003), pp. 886Á97. 55 As explained by the OiE's Bernard
Vallat: 'One country with weaknesses in veterinary services [is] a threat to all', while
capacity building is an 'international public good'. Comments at the 2006 International
Symposium on Emerging Zoonoses, Atlanta, 22Á24 Mar. 2006. 56 The goal of 'reaching into'
the sovereign space of the nation-state, or 'improving' their reporting to global
institutions, is the explicit aim of the OiE's WAHIS Web application. As Bernard Vallat
explains, 'The active search and verification procedure for unofficial information from
various sources that was introduced in 2002 has become more effective each year. Its
results have improved the exhaustiveness of the OIE's information in general, and the
credibility of official information from certain Member Countries in particular': B.
Vallat, 'Entering a new era: the birth of the WAHIS Web application', OiE (Dec. 2005).
http:// www.oie.int/eng/Edito/en_edito_mai06.htm, last accessed 10 Sep. 2006. 57
Interview with Scott Dowell (CDC), 2006 International Symposium on Emerging Zoonoses,
Atlanta, 24 Mar. 2006. 28 cultural geographies 14(1)</meta-value></custom-meta></custom-meta-wrap></article-meta></front><back><notes><p>1 G. Deleuze, <italic>Expressionism in philosophy: Spinoza</italic> (New York, Zone, 1990
[1968]), p. 255.</p><p>2 N. Rose, ‘The politics of life itself’, <italic>Theory, culture and
society</italic>, 18 (2001), pp. 1–30.</p><p>3 C. Novas and N. Rose, ‘Genetic risk and the birth of the somatic
individual’, <italic>Economy and society</italic>, 29 (2000), pp. 485–513.</p><p>4 See S. Franklin, <italic>Born and made: an ethnography of pre-implantation genetic
diagnosis</italic> (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2006); S. Franklin, C. Lury
and J. Stacey, <italic>Global nature, global culture</italic> (London, Sage, 2000); P. Rabinow,
<italic>Essays in the anthropology of reason</italic> (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University
Press, 1997).</p><p>5 See E. Thacker, <italic>The global genome: biotechnology, politics and culture</italic>
(Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2005).</p><p>6 See D. Heath, R. Rapp and K. Taussig, ‘Genetic citizenship’, in D.
Nugent and J. Vincent, eds, <italic>A companion to the anthropology of politics</italic>
(Malden, MA, Blackwell, 2004), pp. 152–67; N. Rose and C. Novas,
‘Biological citizenship’, in A. Ong and S. Collier, eds, <italic>Global
assemblages: technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems</italic>
(Malden, MA, Blackwell, 2004), pp. 439–63.</p><p>7 Vallet made his comments at the International Symposium on Emerging Zoonoses, Atlanta,
22–24 Mar. 2006.</p><p>8 K. Ansell-Pearson, <italic>Germinal life: the difference and repetition of Deleuze</italic>
(London, Routledge, 1999), p. 13.</p><p>9 M. Foucault, <italic>Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison</italic> (New York,
Vintage, 1977); M. Foucault, <italic>The history of sexuality</italic>, vol. 1 (New York,
Pantheon, 1979); M. Foucault, ‘Governmentality’, in G. Burchell, C.
Gordon and P. Miller, eds, <italic>The Foucault effect: studies in governmentality</italic>
(Chicago, University of Chicago Press 1991 [1978]), pp. 87–104.</p><p>10 This making a political object of ‘life’ also provided means of
resistance to techniques of power, often through the language of
‘rights’. The ‘right’ to a healthy body, for
instance, emerged <italic>as a right</italic> in conjunction with a biopolitical regime that
took the health of populations as their concern. That the language of rights is
<italic>internal</italic> to biopolitics, rather than that which modifies or contests it from
the outside, is certainly one of the most far-reaching conclusions that emanates from
Giorgio Agamben's understanding of sovereign power. See G. Agamben, <italic>Homo
Sacer: sovereign power and bare life</italic>, trans. by D. Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA,
Stanford University Press, 1998).</p><p>11 Giorgio Agamben has famously argued that the production of the biopolitical body was
the ‘original activity of sovereign power’, and locates this
politicization of biological life as far back as Aristotle's distinction
between zoe (biological life) and <italic>bios</italic> (political life, or a qualified way of
life). In Foucault's work the relation between biopower and sovereign power was
never clearly articulated, existing as a sort of ‘vanishing point’
in his writing. Catherine Mills notes that in <italic>History of sexuality</italic>, Foucault
suggests that sovereignty is replaced by biopower, while in his essay
‘Governmentality’, he suggests that discipline, government and
sovereignty coincide historically. See C. Mills, ‘Biopolitics, liberal
eugenics and nihilism’, in S. DeCaroli and M. Calarco, eds, <italic>Sovereignty
and life: essays on the work of Giorgio Agamben</italic> (Stanford, CA, Stanford
University Press, forthcoming).</p><p>12 Rose, ‘The politics of life itself’, pp. 1, 13.</p><p>13 <italic>Ibid</italic>, pp. 13–14.</p><p>14 Thacker, Global genome.</p><p>15 C. Waldby, The visible human project: informatic bodies and posthuman medicine (New
York, Routledge, 2000); Thacker, Global genome.</p><p>16 Rose, ‘The politics of life itself’, pp. 16–17.</p><p>17 Habermas sets out the problem in somewhat different terms, as contradicting the
Enlightenment ideal of autonomy, and thus the ethical self-understanding of the species.
With pre-implantation genetic screening, the child <italic>has determined for it its</italic>
biological future, with the risk that ‘we may no longer see ourselves as
ethically free and morally equal beings guided by norms and reason’: J.
Habermas, The future of human nature (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2003), p. 41.</p><p>18 Rose, ‘The politics of life itself’, p. 5.</p><p>19 <italic>Ibid</italic>., p. 17.</p><p>20 For examples, see Heath et al., ‘Genetic citizenship’, pp. 152–6.</p><p>21 See Rose and Novas, ‘Biological citizenship’.</p><p>22 See H. Parr, ‘New body-geographies: the embodied spaces of health and
medical information on the Internet’ <italic>Environment and planning D: society
and space</italic> 20 (2002), pp. 73–95; Heath et al., ‘Genetic
citizenship’. Indeed, so important has the Internet become for the politics of
health that <italic>how</italic> these virtual spaces are constructed and negotiated by
different individuals and social groups, from accreditation organizations like URAC to
individuals and social groups with differing ability to negotiate what is often a
bewildering array of information, is of growing concern.</p><p>23 Rose and Novas, ‘Biological citizenship’.</p><p>24 For Dean, neoliberal governmentality rests on the production of a particular kind of
subject who understands themselves in terms of making (wise) choices, and thus in terms
of individual responsibility. See M. Dean, <italic>Governmentality: power and rule in modern
society</italic> (Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage, 1999).</p><p>25 Heath et al., ‘Genetic citizenship’.</p><p>26 Waldby, <italic>Visible human project</italic>.</p><p>27 See E. Thacker, ‘Diversity.com/Population.gov’, Walker Art Center
Web Gallery, http:// www.walkerart.org/archive/5/AF73755568388DC9616B. Accessed 2 Mar. 2006.</p><p>28 Quoted in Rose, ‘Politics of life itself’, p. 20.</p><p>29 For more on this last point, see C. Mills, ‘Biopolitics, liberal eugenics
and nihilism’.</p><p>30 M. Dillon, ‘Virtual security: a life science of (dis)order’,
<italic>Millennium: journal of international studies</italic> 32 (2003), p. 531</p><p>31 Under the terms of Rose's ontology, ‘subjects’ are
relational, but the ‘genetic’ body becomes so only in contact with biotechnology.</p><p>32 Post-genomic microbiology not only suggests that there are much longer
‘sequential chains’ involved in genetic events but, as Melinda
Cooper notes, it has increasingly posited a ‘co-evolution’ of humans
and microbes, such that ‘We are literally born of ancient alliances between
bacteria and our own cells; microbes are inside us, in our history, but are also
implicated in the continuing evolution of all forms of life on earth’: M.
Cooper, ‘Pre-empting emergence: the biological turn in the War on
Terror’, <italic>Theory, culture and society</italic>, 23 (2006), p. 17.</p><p>33 N. King, ‘The influence of anxiety: September 11, bioterrorism, and American
public health’, <italic>Journal of the history of medicine</italic>, 58 (2003), pp. 433–41.</p><p>34 Hinchliffe and Bingham identify three different ways that
‘biosecurity’ has entered the political agenda: in terms of invasive
species, foodborne illnesses and infectious diseases. Each of these names a different
set of material conditions, and ethical and political practices. My focus on infectious
diseases–and the political rationalities organized around it–is
meant to call attention to emergent forms of sovereign power. S. Hinchliffe and N.
Bingham, ‘Mapping the mulitiplicities of biosecurity: an
introduction’, paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Association of
American Geographers, Chicago, 10 Mar. 2006.</p><p>35 Indeed, officials from the WHO believe that there are multiple
‘strains’ of H5N1 currently in circulation, with each strain
containing HA and NA proteins with slightly different amino-acid sequences.</p><p>36 B. Massumi, <italic>The politics of everyday fear</italic> (Minneapolis, University of
Minnesota Press, 1993), p. 11.</p><p>37 For more on the virtual, see B. Massumi, <italic>Parables for the virtual: movement,
affect, sensation</italic> (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2002).</p><p>38 See G. Davies, ‘The funny business of biotechnology: better living through
comedy’, Geoforum (forthcoming).</p><p>39 ‘U.S. bird flu scenario eyed’, Associated Press (21 Sept. 2005).
Accessed at http:// www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/21/health/main870945.shtml, Feb. 2006.</p><p>40 N. King, ‘Dangerous fragments’, Grey Room 7 (2002), pp. 72-81. See
also the collection of essays in A. Harris and R. Keil, eds, <italic>Networked disease</italic>
(Oxford, Blackwell, forthcoming).</p><p>41 This is a highly contested claim, criticized by some for deflecting attention from
industrial agriculture.</p><p>42 Rumsfeld first made these comments at a Defense Department briefing on 12 Feb. 2002.</p><p>43 NIAID is the acronym for the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases,
a branch of the NIH.</p><p>44 Cooper, ‘Pre-empting emergence’; see also Dillon,
‘Virtual security’.</p><p>45 See K. Zeese, ‘Return of the petri dish warriors’, Counterpunch (1
June 2006).</p><p>46 For further discussion, see N. King, ‘Security, disease, commerce:
ideologies of postcolonial global health’, <italic>Social studies of science</italic>,
32 (2002), pp. 763–789.</p><p>47 These networks have been limited by conflicts over intellectual property, with the
USA, and the CDC in particular, receiving considerable blame for failing fully to share
information. Other countries–Indonesia in particular–have worried
about neocolonial forms of bioprospecting and genetic enclosure around infectious
disease research.</p><p>48 See King, ‘Security, disease, commerce’.</p><p>49 The FAO–USGS programme began during summer 2006 with wild swans moving
between Mongolia and Eurasia. See ‘Satellites help scientists track migratory
birds’, FAO Newsroom.
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000388/index.html, accessed 10 Sept. 2006.</p><p>50 Emphasis added. T. Thompson, ‘Public health knows no borders’,
<italic>U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda</italic> 8 (2003).
http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itps/0803/ijpe/pj81thompson.htm, Accessed 19 Jan. 2006.</p><p>51 <italic>Ibid</italic>. Emphasis added.</p><p>52 Quoted in King, ‘Security, disease, commerce’.</p><p>53 For more on this, see <italic>ibid</italic>.</p><p>54 See T. Barnett, ‘The “core” and the
“gap”’, <italic>Providence journal-bulletin</italic> (7 Nov.
2003); see also S. Roberts, A. Secor and M. Sparke, ‘Neoliberal
geopolitics’, <italic>Antipode</italic> 35 (2003), pp. 886–97.</p><p>55 As explained by the OiE's Bernard Vallat: ‘One country with
weaknesses in veterinary services [is] a threat to all’, while capacity
building is an ‘international public good’. Comments at the 2006
International Symposium on Emerging Zoonoses, Atlanta, 22–24 Mar. 2006.</p><p>56 The goal of ‘reaching into’ the sovereign space of the
nation-state, or ‘improving’ their reporting to global institutions,
is the explicit aim of the OiE's WAHIS Web application. As Bernard Vallat
explains, ‘The active search and verification procedure for unofficial
information from various sources that was introduced in 2002 has become more effective
each year. Its results have improved the exhaustiveness of the OIE's
information in general, and the credibility of official information from certain Member
Countries in particular’: B. Vallat, ‘Entering a new era: the birth
of the WAHIS Web application’, OiE (Dec. 2005). http://
www.oie.int/eng/Edito/en_edito_mai06.htm, last accessed 10 Sep. 2006.</p><p>57 Interview with Scott Dowell (CDC), 2006 International Symposium on Emerging Zoonoses,
Atlanta, 24 Mar. 2006.</p></notes></back></article></istex:document></istex:metadataXml><mods version="3.6"><titleInfo lang="en"><title>Biopolitics and the molecularization of life</title></titleInfo><titleInfo type="alternative" lang="en" contentType="CDATA"><title>Biopolitics and the molecularization of life</title></titleInfo><name type="personal"><namePart type="given">Bruce</namePart><namePart type="family">Braun</namePart><affiliation>Department of Geography, University of Minnesota</affiliation></name><typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource><genre type="research-article" displayLabel="research-article" authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://content-type.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://content-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XTP-1JC4F85T-7">research-article</genre><originInfo><publisher>Sage Publications</publisher><place><placeTerm type="text">Sage CA: Thousand Oaks, CA</placeTerm></place><dateIssued encoding="w3cdtf">2007-01</dateIssued><copyrightDate encoding="w3cdtf">2007</copyrightDate></originInfo><language><languageTerm type="code" authority="iso639-2b">eng</languageTerm><languageTerm type="code" authority="rfc3066">en</languageTerm></language><abstract lang="en">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.</abstract><subject><genre>keywords</genre><topic>Biopolitics</topic><topic>biosecurity</topic><topic>molecularization</topic><topic>Nikolas Rose</topic></subject><relatedItem type="host"><titleInfo><title>Cultural Geographies</title></titleInfo><genre type="journal" authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://publication-type.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://publication-type.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/JMC-0GLKJH51-B">journal</genre><identifier type="ISSN">1474-4740</identifier><identifier type="eISSN">1477-0881</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID">CGJ</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID-hwp">spcgj</identifier><part><date>2007</date><detail type="volume"><caption>vol.</caption><number>14</number></detail><detail type="issue"><caption>no.</caption><number>1</number></detail><extent unit="pages"><start>6</start><end>28</end></extent></part></relatedItem><identifier type="istex">02B70A48C36CD496A89191354667052F949624ED</identifier><identifier type="ark">ark:/67375/M70-HK3JMC80-6</identifier><identifier type="DOI">10.1177/1474474007072817</identifier><identifier type="ArticleID">10.1177_1474474007072817</identifier><recordInfo><recordContentSource authority="ISTEX" authorityURI="https://loaded-corpus.data.istex.fr" valueURI="https://loaded-corpus.data.istex.fr/ark:/67375/XBH-0J1N7DQT-B">sage</recordContentSource></recordInfo></mods><json:item><extension>json</extension><original>false</original><mimetype>application/json</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/ark:/67375/M70-HK3JMC80-6/record.json</uri></json:item></metadata><serie></serie></istex></record>Pour manipuler ce document sous Unix (Dilib)
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