Is the Bio- in Biology the Bio- in Biopower?
The explosion of well-funded specializations in biology, notably under the rubrics of genetics, bioinformatics and biotechnology, is very much a function of the ways biology has been adapted to the mechanics of the doxa of our time, neoliberalism. As a political economic theory, neoliberalism maintains that individuals and society flourish best when government confines its function to the guarantee and protection of private property, free markets and free trade. This ideology has achieved extraordinary influence through its association with moral notions of individual freedom and human dignity, especially vis-à-vis their perceived enemies: the totalitarian regimes of communism and, since the end of the cold war, Islamic fundamentalism. Promoted this way, the universal human desire for such a system is taken to be self-evident. Via this ideology anything humans value becomes legally articulated as something to be owned by one party literally at the expense of another: not only real esta
