Paul Rabinow: Anthropos Today: Reflections on Modern Equipment (2003)

The discipline of anthropology is, at its best, characterized by turbulence, self-examination, and inventiveness. In recent decades, new thinking and practice within the field has certainly reflected this pattern, as shown for example by numerous fruitful ventures into the “politics and poetics” of anthropology. Surprisingly little attention, however, has been given to the simple insight that anthropology is composed of claims, whether tacit or explicit, about anthropos and about logos–and the myriad ways in which these two Greek nouns have been, might be, and should be, connected. Anthropos Today represents a pathbreaking effort to fill this gap.

Paul Rabinow brings together years of distinguished work in this magisterial volume that seeks to reinvigorate the human sciences. Specifically, he assembles a set of conceptual tools–“modern equipment”–to assess how intellectual work is currently conducted and how it might change.

Anthropos Today crystallizes Rabinow’s previous ethnographic inquiries into the production of truth about life in the world of biotechnology and genome mapping (and his invention of new ways of practicing this pursuit), and his findings on how new practices of life, labor, and language have emerged and been institutionalized. Here, Rabinow steps back from empirical research in order to reflect on the conceptual and ethical resources available today to conduct such inquiries.

Drawing richly on Foucault and many other thinkers including Weber and Dewey, Rabinow concludes that a “contingent practice” must be developed that focuses on “events of problematization.” Brilliantly synthesizing insights from American, French, and German traditions, he offers a lucid, deeply learned, original discussion of how one might best think about anthropos today.

Publisher Princeton University Press, 2003
ISBN 0691115664, 9780691115665
159 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-10-29)

Jacques Ellul: The Technological Bluff (1990)

This poignant critique of modern society shows how we have mistakenly allowed technology to fool us into thinking about all of our problems in terms of technical progress. This technological bluff, Ellul claims, deprives us of active adaptation to and criticism of technical growth.

The author argues that “an easily distracted consumer society is caught up in a rapidly developing, uncontrollable technological system. … Everyproblem generates a technological solution; computers breed ever larger, morefragile, and vulnerable systems. But the solutions raise more and greater problems than they solve. … Responsibility, contemplation, civility, and spirituality suffer.” (Choice)

Published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1990
ISBN 080280960X, 9780802809605
436 pages

Key terms:
Minitel, telematics, Le Monde, Third World, technopolis, genetic engineering, independent local radio, technocrats, videotex, microcomputers, entropy, Testart, Jacques Ellul, gross national product, Nomenklatura, artificial intelligence, University of Bordeaux, technostructure, vitro fertilization, Paris

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PDF (updated on 2012-8-11)

Eugene Thacker: Biomedia (2004)

As biotechnology defines the new millennium, genetic codes and computer codes increasingly merge-life understood as data, flesh rendered programmable. Where this trend will take us, and what it might mean, is what concerns Eugene Thacker in this timely book, a penetrating look into the intersection of molecular biology and computer science in our day and its likely ramifications for the future.

Integrating approaches from science and media studies, Biomedia is a critical analysis of research fields that explore relationships between biologies and technologies, between genetic and computer “codes.” In doing so, the book looks beyond the familiar examples of cloning, genetic engineering, and gene therapy-fields based on the centrality of DNA or genes-to emerging fields in which “life” is often understood as “information.” Focusing especially on interactions between genetic and computer codes, or between “life” and “information,” Thacker shows how each kind of “body” produced-from biochip to DNA computer-demonstrates how molecular biology and computer science are interwoven to provide unique means of understanding and controlling living matter.

Throughout, Thacker provides in-depth accounts of theoretical issues implicit in biotechnical artifacts-issues that arise in the fields of bioinformatics, proteomics, systems biology, and biocomputing. Research in biotechnology, Biomedia suggests, flouts our assumptions about the division between biological and technological systems. New ways of thinking about this division are needed if we are to understand the cultural, social, and philosophical dimensions of such research, and this book marks a significant advance in the coming intellectual revolution.

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2004
ISBN 0816643520, 9780816643523
226 pages

Key terms: bioinformatics, bioMEMS, nanomedicine, DNA computer, bioethics, systems biology, nanotechnology, base pair, molecular biology, biotechnology, biocomputing, DNA chip, systems theory, posthuman, autopoiesis, bio-ethics, proteomics, programmable matter, wet lab, Bertalanffy

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PDF (updated on 2013-3-16)