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In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Second Reader: Assistant Professor Anna Loutfi Abstract
This thesis examines the concept of anthropological machine introduced by political philosopher Giorgio Agamben. Through a close reading of his work The Open: Man and Animal I define anthropological machine as an assemblage of sciences about human biology, technologies that target human biological life and the attitude to human biological life as to the entity that can be managed and controlled. Turning to the theories of Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway and Francis Fukuyama I examine what meaning to science and technology they ascribe in their philosophy. I conclude that in a biopolitical state, where human life becomes a commodity and a part of social, economic and trade relations, science and technology have the capacity not only for the mere management of human biology, but also for the reconfiguration of what constitutes for the human and what stands for the non-human.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my supervisor professor Allaine Cerwonka for the insightful comments, patient guidance and inspiration that she gave to me throughout my work on this project. I feel extremely privileged that I had a chance to work under her supervision and to take the courses she offered in the academic year of 2011/2012.
I also want to express my gratitude to professors Anna Loutfi and Eszter Timar for intellectually stimulating classes and extremely helpful comments that they gave on my This work is dedicated to my parents whose most gentle care and support gave me strength to Table of Contents

Introduction
In this work I examine how various political and social thinkers of the present address the role of machines and technologies in a biopolitical state. Biopolitics addresses human biological life (Lemke 2011, p. 2), the kind of life that Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben (2002) calls nutritive or animal life (p. 14-15). In a contemporary biopolitical state human biological life is managed by the means of biomedical technology (Rose 2007, p. 3).
In The Open: Man and Animal Agamben (2002) introduces the concept of anthropological machine to discuss how human biology is targeted by natural and medical sciences and how it can be managed by technologies. In my thesis I take Agamben's understanding of the machine as an assemblage of medical and natural sciences and biomedical technologies and explore how other social and political thinkers address the problem of sciences and technologies' grip of human biological life.
In Chapter 1 I offer a close reading of The Open: Man and Animal and discuss why in Agamben's philosophy the machine has a complex meaning of the combination of sciences and technologies. Moreover, I examine the connotation that Agamben associates with the concept of the machine. Thus, I argue that in Agamben's theory the image of the machine renders the idea of science and technology being an artificial, strange to the living world entity that reduces the life of its complexity and mystery (Oliver 2009, p. 234-235).
In chapter 2 turn to the theories of feminist thinkers Donna Haraway (2004; 2008) and Rosie Braidotti (2002). Along with Agamben, Haraway and Braidotti engage with the question of how sciences bring into close proximity the human to the animal and how technology intervenes into human body. However, while Agamben represents sciences and technologies that they produce with an image of the machine that poses threat to the human- being, Haraway and Braidotti observe positive sides in the destruction of the boundaries between the human and the non-human. Haraway's cyborg or Braidotti’s nomad, the subjects that emerge when the borders between the human, the animal and the machine are transcended, in Haraway's (2004; 2008) and Braidotti's (2002) vision, are capable of producing a new kind of politics. Since the animal, along with women or colonized people, is one of the facets of modernity's Other, opposed to the dominant Self, cyborg and nomadic subjects open the possibility for the emergence of the society without hierarchies, oppositions and domination (Styhre 2001, pp. 4-5). However, by applying cyborg or nomadic identities to surrogate motherhood, I challenge Haraway's and Braidotti's idea about the egalitarian politics that cyborg and nomad produce. Turning to Achille Mbembe's (2008) theory I draw parallels between surrogate mothers, slaves and such machines as labor saving devices, and claim that while in Mbembe's (2008) theory slavery is “an instance of a biopolitical experimentation” (p. 160), and slave is what Agamben (2002) names bare life, human with suspended humanity, surrogacy can also be considered as an example of biopolitical experimentation, and surrogate mothers can be regarded as bare life. That said, surrogacy becomes an example of Agamben's anthropological machine at work, as in the case of surrogacy biomedical technologies target human biological functions and reduce the human In Chapter 2 I emphasize the fact that Haraway (2004; 2008) and Braidotti (2002) fail to take into consideration the unequal access to biomedical technologies when they praise the erasure of the borders between the human, the machine and the animal and the intervention of technology into human body. In Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Francis Fukuyama appeals to the empirical research and demonstrates how biomedical technologies are not equally accessible by people. In Fukuyama's (2002) theory such an uneven distribution of biomedical technologies is the reason why he calls politics, philosophy and religion to control how science and biomedical technologies put human biological life at stake of social, economic and trade relations. Like Agamben (2002), Fukuyama (2002) considers technology's management of human biological life to be the consequence of the reduction of the distance between the human and the animal that natural and medical sciences do. According to Fukuyama (2002), in order to stop the reduction of the human to mere biological functions, human exceptionality and uniqueness should not be contested by science, and the notion of the human should be taken for granted. At first glance, Fukuyama's idea to set definite boundaries of the human and not to question human difference from other species may sound like a call to stop the operation of anthropological machine, which dehumanizes the human. However, I argue, that Fukuyama's idea of taking the notion of the human for granted may actually contribute to the dehumanization of certain groups of people who can be pushed outside the boundaries of the human. I will support this claim by the fact that in Fukuyama's theory the breaching of the borders between the human and the non- human is something that has the potential to happen in future. Meanwhile, the case of surrogacy serves as an example of how the borders of the human and the non-human are already being transgressed, and the introduction of fixed definition of what is human can dehumanize those whose subjectivities exist in-between the human, the machine and the My overall argument is that Agamben's anthropological machine is a succinct metaphor that describes how natural and medical sciences and biomedical technologies that flourish in contemporary highly medicalized society (Rose 2007, p. 1) are capable to reconfigure the meaning of the human due to their capacity of reducing the distance between the human, the animal and the machine.
Chapter 1 Anthropological Machine: Reconfiguration of the
Human and the Animal
1.1 Introduction
In this chapter I argue that in Giorgio Agamben’s theory anthropological machine has a range of meanings. Oliver (2009) writes that the notion of the machine represents a combination of various discourses among which scientific discourse is the predominant one (p. 229, p. 234). Since it is mainly natural and medical sciences that operate anthropological machine, and, hence, draw a division between the human and the animal, in Agamben’s theory machine functions as a metaphor that reflects how medical and natural sciences situate zoe, the animal, within the human and produce a mechanistic division of the human on social and biological, on the human and the animal.
Along with that, I claim, that in his theory Agamben also addresses the role of machines in a direct, non-metaphorical meaning of this word: I argue that, although not utterly explicitly, Agamben offers us an insight into the fact that machines and technology produced by natural and medical sciences are capable of reducing the human to the animal.
Following Oliver’s (2009) interpretation of Agamben’s hint on the capacity of technology to animalize the human, I claim that in Agamben’s theory medical machines and technology animalize the human by the fact that they objectify human being.
While in my interpretation, the machine in Agamben’s philosophy stands for natural and medical sciences and technologies they produce that altogether target human biological life, I also want to point out a strong negative and menacing connotation with which Agamben fills his concept of the machine. I find it striking that Agamben uses machine, the third element of the triangle of human-animal-machine to analyze how the animal gets opposed to the human, and how at the same time animal can be situated within the human and can be targeted by state powers. From my analysis of the work that the concept of anthropological machine does in Agamben’s philosophy, I infer that Agamben uses this very concept to communicate the idea of some artificial, mechanistic and rational entity that meddles into the living world and decides on what kind of life is politically relevant and what kind of life is not, what sort of life may constitute for bios and what sort of life can constitute for zoe, what type of life is human and what type of life is animal.
Said that, I assume that the machine in Agamben’s theory stands for the assemblage of certain kinds of scientific knowledge about the human that produce certain kinds of technologies that target human biological life and that entail certain attitude to human biological life. Such a reading of Agamben’s concept of anthropological machine resonates with the meaning that Nicolas Rose (2007), social scientist and a theorist of biopolitics, ascribes to the notion of technologies of life. From Rose’s (2007) perspective, in biopolitical theory the meaning of technology does not simply boil down to equipment or techniques (p.
16). In Rose’s (2007) theory technology of life encompasses “knowledges, instruments, persons, systems of judgment, buildings and spaces, underpinned at the programmatic level by certain presuppositions and assumptions about human beings.” (p. 17) Rose (2007) observes that the presence of biomedical technologies in our life makes us to rethink the ownership of our body and the meaning of our biological life: he highlights that human body and life become engaged in trade and social relations, and becomes a commodity (p. 17). In his analysis of how sciences situate the animal within the human, Agamben (2002) also hints on the fact that the situation of animality by natural and medical sciences, and the existence of technologies that these very sciences produce create the possibility for human physiology to become the ends of human social and economic relations I assume that the striking peculiarity of the notion of Agamben’s anthropological machine consists not only in the fact that it is a concept with such a multi-layered meaning, but also in the fact that it differs Agamben’s theory on biopolitics from the works of other thinkers who engaged with the topic of biopolitics, such Achille Mbembe, Roberto Esposito, In Homo Sacer and The Open: Man and Animal Agamben engages with the question of how the state exercises its power on human life. When saying that in modernity human biological life becomes the object on which the state exercises its power, Giorgio Agamben follows to a great extent Michel Foucault (2003) who describes biopolitics as state’s control over the biological life of population. Thus, Agamben (1998) discusses the notion of biopolitics that he defines, following Foucault (2003), as the kind of politics at which “the species and the individual as a simple living body become what is at stake in a society’s political strategies” (p. 3) and “nation’s health and biological life become a problem of Thus, although in his theory Agamben, like Foucault (2003), analyzes how human biological life becomes the target of modern politics, in The Open: Man and Animal he, however, adds the concept of anthropological machine as a new analytical tool to reveal the mechanisms that make human biological life a political concern and to express his anxiety about the reduction of the human to the animal and the consequences that this reduction can To support my argument about the significance of the notion of the machine for the understanding of Agamben’s theory on biopolitics and to discuss all the meanings that this notion embraces, I will, firstly examine how Agamben represents the role of natural and medical sciences in the work of anthropological machine, and hence, in the production of the human and the animal. Secondly, I will discuss how Agamben envisages the role of machines and technology in the mediation of the relation between the human and the animal. Thirdly, I will discuss what sort of connotation the image of machine possesses in Agamben’s philosophy, and how it reveals Agamben’s anxiety about the process of the animalization of the human performed by sciences and technology.
1.2 Science: the situation of the animal within the human
In his discussion of how the human has been opposed to the animal and how the animal was situated within the human, Agamben discusses how various disciplines, such as theology, philosophy and natural and medical sciences were engaged in the production of the opposition between the human and the animal. However, in her reading of The Open: Man and Animal Oliver (2009) observes that Agamben ascribes an important role to science when he describes the work of anthropological machine: according to her, in anthropological machine Western science decreases the gap between the human and the animal, and, hence, Indeed, a close reading of Agamben’s The Open: Man and Animal reveals his keen interest in the way medical and natural sciences are engaged in the work of anthropological machine and its side effect of the animalization of the human. Thereby, in his analysis of how biological life becomes the target of modern politics, Agamben equals human biological life to animal life, building his equation on the work of Aristotle and French anatomist and physiologist Marie-Francois Xavier Bichat, whose work, according to Agamben (2002), implies that “something like an animal life can be separated within man”. (p. 15.) Having the most important place in the work of Agamben’s anthropological machine, medical and natural sciences, however, seem to interlace with other disciplines. Thus, for instance, Agamben (2002) writes that Aristotle's isolation of zoe, that is nutritive life and that is responsible for nutrition, decay and growth (p. 13-14) and is shared by all living beings and the contrasting of zoe to bios, political and relational life, that is inherent in people, is a “fundamental event for Western science” (Agamben 2002, p. 14). In Agamben’s analysis, Aristotle’s idea of zoe and bios is crucial for the development of Western science, such as biology and medicine and how these sciences inherent a lot from this philosophical idea in the way they define the human and the animal, Agamben turns to the work of French anatomist and physiologist Marie-Francois-Xavier Bichat.
According to Agamben (2002), in the 18th century Marie-Francois- Xavier Bichat drew a distinction between 'animal life' and 'organic life', situating within higher organisms l'animal existant au-dedans and l'animal existant au-dehors. Agamben (2002) explains that for Bichat l'animal existant au-dedans is responsible for organic functions, such as blood circulation and respiration (p. 15), while l'animal existant au-dehors “is defined through its relation to the external world” (Agamben 2002, p. 15). In Absolute Immanence Agamben (1999) writes that in Bichat's distinction between l'animal existant au-dedans and l'animal existant au-dehors “it is still Aristotle's nutritive life that constitutes the background against which the life of superior animals is separated and on which the “animal living on the outside” is opposed to the animal on the inside” (p. 231).
Agamben (2002) writes that Aristotle's idea of the existence of two kinds of life that higher organisms have, zoe and bios, and Bichat's similar idea about two animals inhabiting the human and being responsible for two different sets of life functions, is still present in contemporary times. Thus, firstly, he writes that in Western culture the human is “thought of as the articulation of a body and a soul, of a living thing and logos, of a natural (animal) element and a supernatural or social, divine element” (Agamben 2002, p. 16). Apart from influencing our general vision of the human as a mixture of animality and humanity, of terrestrial and celestial, Agamben (2002) writes that Aristotle's and later Bichat's division of life functions on nutritive and relational is of great importance for modern surgery and anesthesia that are based on this distinction between two kinds of life functions (p. 15).
When tracing how Aristotle's and Bichat's ideas about two kinds of life are present in our society, Agamben (2002) writes that what, according to Foucault is at stake in a biopolitical state, is nothing but that zoe situated by Aristotle or l'animal existant au-dedans, identified by Thereby, Agamben demonstrates how the idea of duality of the human, fuels anthropological machine to dissect the human on the animal and the human, on biological and social, on flesh and consciousness, and how the animal, the biological and the flesh In Agamben's theory the fact that Bichat, following Aristotle, said that humans share basic organic functions with animals is an example of how scientific inquiry about human biology lays in the basis if the work of anthropological machine: Agamben's (2002) reference to Bichat's work illustrates how science is engaged in the breaching of the boundaries between the human and the animal by situating animality within the human.
Another reference to science that Agamben (2002) makes to demonstrate that it is a scientific discourse that is predominant in the work of anthropological machine and its side- effect, the animalization of the human, is his reference to the work of Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (p. 23). Agamben (2002) writes that Linnaeus' claim about the difficulty of identifying specific difference between apes and the human tells us about the uncertainty of the boundaries between the human and the animal.
Combining Aristotle's and Bichat's idea of the existence of animality within the human with the struggle of the scholars of the Enlightenment period to find distinctive features of the human versus animal, Agamben (2002) concludes that “Homo sapiens, then, is neither a clearly defined species nor a substance; it is, rather, a machine or device for producing the recognition of the human” (p. 26). Agamben (2002) writes that when the human looks at himself, his image is 'deformed in the features of an ape” (p. 27). Here, I assume that Agamben wants to communicate two things. The first thing is that natural sciences have created the tradition of defining the human by comparing it to the animal. The second thing is that this comparison implies simultaneous contrasting of the human to the animal and defining some features shared by both the human and the animal. Thus, in Agamben’s theory, natural and life sciences serve as crucially important operative mechanism of anthropological machine (Agamben 2002, p. 37).
Oliver (2009) agrees that Agamben's anthropological machine is 'fueled' by science (p. 234). According to her, in Agamben's theory it is biological and medical science that breaches the borders between the human and the animal, and, eventually, reduces the human to the animal (p. 234). Thus, I assume, in Agamben's philosophy biological and medical science are represented as standing above the human and the animal and mediating both the meanings of these categories and their interrelation.
Thus, in Agamben's theory anthropological machine that is operated mainly by natural science, not only mechanistically divides life on animal and human life, but also creates the hierarchical relations between animal and human life. Since the nutritive life or l'animal existant au dedans are shared by all the living organisms, and relational life or l'animal existant au-dehors is inherent only in humans, the isolation of nutritive life or l'animal existant au-dedans to relational life or l'animal existant au dehors implies the establishing of hierarchy living organisms with those having relational life occupying the top of the hierarchy. The fact that in Agamben's theory natural and life sciences mediate the relations between zoe and bios by producing a taxonomic view on living species, dividing them on higher and less developed, on those who possess relational life and on those who lack it, will be useful in Chapter 2 of my thesis, in which I will turn to the works of Braidotti (2002) and Haraway (2004; 2008), and will examine what role in mediating relations between the human and the animal they ascribe to machines.
In this section I have examined how natural and medical science act as dominant forces in the operation of anthropological machine and draw the line between the human and the animal, and, at the same time, situate animal life within the human. In this sense machine, fuelled mainly by natural and medical science, metaphorically dissects the human on such opposite categories as the biological and the social, the animal and the human. However, further in this chapter, I will consider how technology and machines in the direct meaning of this word are engaged in the work of anthropological machine, and how in Agamben’s theory they have the capacity to reduce the human to the animal.
1.3 Technological grip of human life
When saying that the result of the work of anthropological machine is the animalization of the human (Agamben 2002, p. 37), and that human biological life “becomes the supreme political task” (Agamben 2002, p. 76), Agamben’s claim resembles Foucault's (2003 characterization of biopolitics as the application of state power to man as to living species (p. 243). Meanwhile, unlike Foucault, Agamben (2002) not only uses the image of anthropological machine that, as I assume, in his theory represents natural science, medicine and technology, but he also introduces the concept of bare life to describe the human whose humanity is suspended and depends on the work of anthropological machine (Puchner 2007, Bare life is situated in-between relational, political life and mere biological life that is shared by all living organisms. Thus, bare life has the potential of becoming human life or animal life, and, hence the category of the human and non-human “can be decided upon and produced.” (Agamben 2002, p. 21). As I have proved in the previous part of this chapter, it is mainly natural and medical sciences that operate the work of the anthropological machine, and, hence, in Agamben’s theory natural and medical sciences take a great part in the production of bare life and in the decision upon bare life’s humanity or animality.
However, along with the fact that the machine in Agamben’s theory stands for life sciences, natural sciences and medicine that, so to say, dissect the human on the human and the animal, it is, I assume, rather legitimate to claim that in Agamben’s theory, machine can Agamben (2002) writes that post-historical man aims at governing his animality by the means of technology (p. 80). Oliver (2009) elaborates on Agamben’s vision of the state management of human biological life through technology and says that in contemporary world, machines play an important role in the management of human biological life. She writes that contemporary medicine is full of machine and computer metaphors that depict the work of human body, especially, human brain (Oliver 2009, p. 236). According to Oliver (2009) the mechanization of life, that is typical of our time of machines and technology, adds Taking on Agamben’s (2002) idea of the “total management of life” by the means of technology (p. 77), Oliver (2009) writes that such practices that involve special medical technology and equipment, as human cloning and transplantation reduce the human to the animal (p. 237). She supports this argument by saying that the application of the aforementioned medical practices to the human resembles the way that animals are subjected to automated processing by factory farming, mechanized slaughter and meatpacking (Oliver 2009, p. 237). Thus, Oliver asserts that technical, mechanic, aspect of modern medicine and life sciences, takes the grip of human biological life and strips humans of their humanity.
Oliver (2009) argues that factory farms and slaughterhouses are the models for the concentration camp, which in Agamben’s theory is an exemplary space of biopolitics (Agamben 1998, p. 4) (p. 231). However, judging from Oliver’s (2009) idea of human cloning and transplantation being an example of how technology takes a grip of human biological life, I think, it can be said that the medical laboratory and the operating room are also spaces of contemporary biopolitics. As Oliver (2009) claims, medical laboratories and operating rooms are the space, where human biological life is objectified, manipulated and altered by the means of medical technology and devices, and, in this, sense, Oliver (2009), writes that there is no significant difference between mechanic butchering, milking and packaging of animals for consumption and human cloning and organ transplantation.
Thereby, elaborating on Agamben’s (2002) idea of technology governing human animality (p. 77), Oliver (2009) discusses how life and medical sciences by the means of the application of medical devices to human body, breach the boundary between the human and the animal through the animalization of the human. Thus, human cloning and organ transplantation are scientific practices that operate the work of modern anthropological machine, by the animalization of the human. Notably, human cloning and organ transplantation are practices impossible without special medical devices and technology and, hence, in this case, the animalization of the human is literally done through the usage of While Agamben (2002) says that the essence of the work of anthropological machine of modernity is the animalization of the human, in the end of The Open: Man and Animal, Agamben (2002) writes that there is a possibility for the emergence of a new sort of life, that is neither the animal and the human, when he discusses the mastery of the life by the means of technology. He does not elaborate further on his suggestion of technology being capable of not only animalization of the human and manipulation of human biology, but also giving a chance for a new type of life to emerge. Thus, Wadiwel (2004) observes, that Agamben (2009) touches the topic of non-humans, including animals as well as machines, having the potential for the reconfiguration of the category of the human (p. 7) According to Wadiwel (2004), Agamben could use the works of Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour to discuss this Instead of engaging with the question of the potential that machines have to reconfigure the relations of the human and the animal, Agamben (2002) rather succinctly outlines two possible scenarios of the work of anthropological machine. Thus, he writes that, the first scenario, involves further production of the opposition between the human and the animal, and the situation of the animality within the human and its control by the means of science and technology (Agamben 2002, p. 80). In the second scenario, suggested by Agamben (2002), “the animality is neither hidden nor is made an object of mastery, but is thought as such” (p. 80). In other words, in the work of the second scenario of anthropological machine the human and the animal are no longer opposed to each other in the way where animal is inferior to the human (Agamben 2002, p. 92).
According to Oliver (2009), the introduction of machines into our life makes it possible for the unfolding of the second scenario. (p. 237). She argues that with the advent of machines can fuel the analysis of the categories of living and machine, instead of human and animal (Oliver 2009, p. 237). In Chapter 2 of my thesis I will take on Oliver’s idea of machines having the capacity to challenge the hierarchical dichotomy of the human and the animal, and will turn to the works of Donna Haraway (2004; 2008), whose scholarship, as Wadiwel writes, Agamben could use to elaborate further on the question of how machines change the relations between humanity and animality. Along with Haraway’s scholarship I will also use the works by Rosi Braidotti (2002).
1.4 Religion, Science and the Borders of the Human Community
In the previous sections of this chapter I have analyzed how Agamben considers natural and medical sciences to be the tool for the breaching of the boundary between the human and the animal. In his theory natural and medical sciences identify common features between the human and bring the animal and the human into such a close proximity that it leads to the animalization of the human, and the emergence of what Agamben (2002) names bare life: the human whose humanity can be suspended (p. 38). Thus, Agamben (2002) points out at the obvious dependency of the existence of the human with suspended humanity on the scientific knowledge that claims that there is not much difference between the human and the animal. Oliver (2009) writes that “a bare life is one produced by biological and medical science as a living body separated from its social, political and even ecological context. It is an exceptional body (monstrous or sacred) whose fate can be determined outside systems of law or reason.” The capacity of anthropological machine that operates with a rather significant contribution of natural and medical science, to produce the human that can be stripped of is humanity charges Agamben's notion of the machine with a significant amount of anxiety.
Oliver (2009) claims that in Agamben's philosophy the threat that medical and natural sciences and technology pose constitutes in the fact that they deprive the world of its mystery “under the searing gaze of science” (p. 234). Agamben (2002) calls for philosophy and theology to intervene into the process of the articulation of the meanings of the human and the animal that in his theory is performed mostly by medical and natural sciences (p. 22).
Agamben's anxiety about science being the dominant tool for the moving of the caesura between the human and the animal is also expressed in the fact that he addresses concentration and extermination camps as the examples of places where the notions of the human and the animal are collapsed due to the fragility and uncertainty of the line between these two categories (Agamben 2002, p. 22). He underlines the monstrosity of the phenomenon of the concentration and extermination camp (Agamben 2002, p. 22).
Meanwhile, the concentration and the extermination camps are the spaces of biopolitics (Agamben 1998, p. 169 ), where, like in any biopolitical space, medical sciences acquire the power to decide on the humanity of the human. From this definition of the concentration camp, I assume, it is possible to infer that in Agamben's theory the concentration camp is the place where the work of the anthropological machine is represented at its most vivid form.
Keeping in mind the fact that it is medical and natural sciences that are the dominant forces that operate the work of the machine, it is evident that Agamben regards science as a potential threat to the stability of the borders of the human. His appeal to philosophy and theology to intervene into the animalization of the human that science does, resonates with Campbell's (2008) description of Derrida's concept of religious immunity (p. xv). Campbell (2008) writes that in Derrida's philosophy “religious immunity lies in the distinction between bio-zoological or anthropo-theological lie and transcendental, sacred life” (p. xv). Campbell (2008) adds that “if there is a biopolitical moment to be found in Derrida's analysis of religion and autoimmunity, it will be found here in the difference between biological life and transcendental life that will continually require the difference between the two to be Said that, I assume that Agamben’s call for philosophy and theology to interfere into the animalization of the human that is done by medical and natural sciences, may be interpreted as an idea of religious immunization of the human, whose borders are threatened to be blurred by science with the boundaries of the bio-zoological world of the animal. Thus, Agamben calls for humanities, non-natural science knowledge to protect the fragile borders of the human.
I will examine a similar sentiment about the capacity of religion to stop the animalization of the human, and to foster the boundaries of the human community against sciences capacity to breach the boundaries between the human and non-human in Francis Fukuyama's theory in 1.5 Conclusion
In this chapter I argued that Agamben's concept of anthropological machine has a range of meanings. Thus, the notion of anthropological machine implies natural and medical sciences that by identifying the similarities between the human and the animal, deprive the human of the feeling of self-uniqueness; it also includes technologies that target human biological life and, eventually, it implies a certain attitude to human biological life, - which means that human biology is perceived as manageable by the intervention of sciences and technologies. I also concluded that Agamben's concept of anthropological machine has a rather menacing connotation, as Agamben regards science as a potential danger for human dignity, and that is why his call for theology to stop the animalization of the human can be interpreted as an idea of religious immunization of the integrity of the borders of the human.
Chapter 2 Machines in Feminist Perspective (Haraway,
Braidotti)
2. 1 Introduction
In Chapter 1 of my thesis I discussed the meaning of the concept of machine in Agamben's philosophy. I concluded that in Agamben's theory machine has a multi-faceted meaning: on the one hand, it is a combination of different discourses, among which the scientific discourse is the dominant one, and this combination of discourses produces the binary opposition of the animal and the human, and situates animality within the human. On the other hand, machine in Agamben's theory can be understood in a more direct sense of this word. Machines are equipment and technology by the means of which human biological life In this chapter I turn to the theories of Donna Haraway (2004; 2008) and Rosie Braidotti (2002) who also engage in the discussion of the way scientific inquiries, especially in the realm of natural and medical sciences, breach the boundary between the human and the non-human. They agree on the fact that science undoes human's sense of exceptionality by bringing the human to close proximity with the animal and, hence, by making the boundary between the human and the non-human fragile.
When Haraway (2008) discusses how science can shake human self-certainty, she refers to Freud who describes three scientific inquiries that challenged the idea of human superiority (p. 11-12). She writes that the first scientific idea that inflicted a 'wound to the primary narcissism of the self-centered human subject' (Haraway 2008, p. 11) is Copernicus' idea about the Earth not being the center of the universe, that opened for the humanity the cosmos, a new unexplored abyss, probably inhabited by other, unknown organisms. The second 'wound' to human exceptionality that Haraway (2008) discusses is Darwin's theory of evolution: it put the human in one order with the animals and did not provide any guarantee that the human is the culmination, the acme of the development of living organisms (p. 11).
The third 'wound' that Haraway (2008) mentions is Freud's undoing of “the primacy of conscious processes” (p. 11). Haraway (2008) writes that with his theory of unconscious Freud challenged human rationality and reason, features that distinguish the human from other species and, hence, serve as an argument in favor of human exceptionality (p. 12). She concludes that it is science that contributed to shifting the human from the center of the universe, and it is science that breaches the so-called great divide between the human and the Braidotti (2002) also mentions the fact that science brings in close proximity the human and the non-human. Referring to Deleuze and Guattari's essay Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible from “A Thousand Plateaus”, Braidotti (2002) writes that “evolutionary theory and genetics; psychoanalysis, which simultaneous unveils and disavows the 'beast within' and the long tradition of literary representation of animals” (p.
12) created the discourse that reduces the distance between the human and the animal.
Braidotti's and Haraway's appraisal of the role of science in challenging of the meaning of the human echoes with Agamben's analysis of science's animalization of the human is a sense that Braidotti, Haraway and Agamben position science as a tool by the means of which the uniqueness of the human is challenged. In Agamben's (2002) theory such scientific inquiries as Tyson's work on comparative anatomy of the human and the ape, and Bichat's division of human life functions on nutritive and relational, on flesh and consciousness became the foundation for the operation of anthropological machine and its side-effect, the animalization of the human. In Haraway's and Braidotti's theories science plays as an important role in blurring of the boundaries between the human and the non- human, as natural and medical sciences that contribute to the operation of Agamben's (2002) anthropological machine and situate the animality, within the humans themselves.
However, Agamben's (2002) attitude to science as a tool for the breaching of the boundaries between the human and the non-human is significantly different from those of Haraway and Braidotti In chapter 1, I discussed that there is a lot of anxiety in Agamben's (2002) image of anthropological machine. In Agamben's theory anthropological machine serves as a powerful image of artificial, rational, menacing entity that is fuelled by medical and natural sciences, destroys human integrity by drawing mechanistic division of human life on zoe and bios, and that, ultimately, deprives the human of its mystery, exceptionality and processes it into bare biological life. Besides, there is a certain amount of anxiety about the potential of technology to get the grip on human biological life (Agamben 2002, p. 77).
Thereby, in Agamben's (2002) thought machine is, on the one hand, a menacing metaphor of natural and medical sciences reducing the human to the animal. On the other hand, Agamben's (2002) machine is a no less an intimidating image of technology itself that is capable of inflicting as much harm to the human being as sciences can by revealing human’s animality and making it the object of management.
In their analysis of how various branches of sciences and the technologies that they produce get introduced in our life, Haraway and Braidotti consider both the positive and the negative effects of science’s capacity to undermine human exceptionality and to put the human in one order with other species entail a range of phenomena .In the interview with Haraway, Nicholas Gane (2006) observes that in “Manifesto for Cyborg” Haraway considers technology as neither positive nor negative (p. 151.) On the one hand, she favors the fact that science undoes human exceptionality by bringing the humans to close proximity with non- humans (Haraway 2008, p. 12), on the other hand, she observes that science and technology, and their unequal spread in the world, re-shapes social relations and create new inequalities Braidotti (2002) also notice that the breaching of the boundaries between the human and the animal by science entails different consequences. On the one hand, she writes about the fact that bringing the human and the animal in close proximity entails the emergence of new, post-humanist, non-unitary subject, that is, unlike the human, is not involved in hierarchical relation with other non-human species (Braidotti 2002, p. 70). On the other hand, Braidotti (2002) writes that medical science, especially such medical technologies, as transplantation and artificial reproduction, entail commodification of certain humans (p. 222).
Braidotti (2002) observes that reproductive technologies construct the bodies of women for whom surrogacy or gamete donations is a source of money, as “the site of the natural” (p.
233). Braidotti (2002) writes that “in this respect, the highly sophisticated discourse of high- tech modernity leaves the female subject where it was before modernity, namely assimilated to nature, identified with reproduction and inimical to civilized progress.” (p. 233).
It is necessary to mention that, unlike Agamben, in their theories, Braidotti and Haraway, discuss concrete machines, such as computers, for instance, and concrete technologies, such as artificial reproductive technologies or genetic engineering. In chapter 1 I have discussed Oliver's (2009) analysis of Agamben's theory, in which she claims that the introduction of machines to our life can erase the opposition between the human and the animal, uniting them together by the category of living and opposing the living to mechanistic, represented by machines and technology. In this chapter I want to discuss how in Braidotti's and Haraway's vision machines and technology influence the relations between the animal and the human, and, perhaps, produce the division between the living and the I argue that in Haraway's and Braidotti's theory machines and technology play a rather ambiguous role. On the one hand, they have the potential of erasing the binary opposition of the human and the animal and, speaking in Braidotti's parlance, “marrying zoe to bios” (p.
170); and the nomad or the cyborg that emerge when the boundaries between the human, the animal and he machine are blurred has the potential to produce the politics without the opposition of the dominant Self and the Other. On the other hand, if we take the case of surrogate motherhood, when biomedical technologies intervene into woman's body, and the border between the human and the machine is breached as the surrogate mother becomes akin with the machine, a “human incubator for someone else's child” (Niekerk & Zyl 1995, p.
347), this case does not fit into the politics of erased divisions and oppositions. As those who do surrogacy to gain financial profit and those who hire a surrogate to bear a baby for them normally belong to different classes and sometimes even ethnicities (Kessler 2009, p. 169), I claim that, surrogate mothers are reduced to non-human. On the one hand, they are reduced to the animal, to what Agamben calls bare life, as it is reproduction, their nutritive, mere biological functions that are put at stake when they engage in surrogacy as a kind of labor. On the other hand they become machines, devices for bearing fetuses; but in their case, the machine subjectivity, unlike Haraway's and Braidotti’s theories, does not produce the politics In the first part of this chapter I will discuss how in Haraway's and Braidotti's vision the cyborg and the nomad subjectivities can produce the politics of no opposition of the dominant Self and the Other. In the second part of this chapter I will turn to the case of surrogate mothers, whose bodily integrity is breached by biomedical technologies and they become akin with machines (Niekerk & Zyl 1995, p. 348), however, unlike the nomad and the cyborg, that are also intermediate forms between the human and the non-human (Styhre 2001, p. 5), the subjectivities of surrogate mothers do not produce the politics of no hierarchies and oppositions; on the contrary, the existence of the offer in surrogate motherhood and the demand in it is dependent on social inequalities (Kessler 2009, p. 169).
2.2 Cyborg and Nomad: Undoing Taxonomies
Haraway (2004) and Braidotti (2002) introduce the concepts of the cyborg and the nomad accordingly to describe an unfixed, fluid and non-molar subjectivity which emerges in-between the human and the non-human. (Styhre 2001, pp. 4-5). Both the nomad and the cyborg are ontologies that produce certain kind of politics. Thereby, Haraway's (2004) concept of the cyborg represents the confusion of the human, the animal and the machine.
She defines the cyborg as “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.” (Haraway 2004, p. 7) Haraway (2004) writes that the cyborg is the ontology of our times (p. 8), and the politics that it gives has no divisions on the subject and the object, on the Same and the Other.
Coming back to the previous chapter, I would like to highlight the fact that both in Agamben's theory and in Haraway's and Braidotti's philosophy bare life, cyborg and nomad are ontologies that produce politics. All these three ontologies emerge as a result of the bringing into close proximity the human, the animal and the machine that is in its turn achieved by the means of scientific inquiries in the realm of biology and medicine and by the means of a range of biomedical technologies. However, bare life, cyborg and nomad, according to Agamben (2002), Haraway (2004) and Braidotti (2002) produce significantly In Agamben’s (2002) theory bare life is the human who is reduced to the animal, to zoe, to mere biological life, and, hence, it is the human whose humanity and human rights are suspended. Meanwhile, Haraway (2004) indicates that “cyborg signals … pleasurably tight coupling” of the human and the animal (p. 10). She observes that the reduction of the distance between the human and the animal is a fruitful ground for the emergence of new politics (Haraway 2004, p. 11), because there is a “discursive tie between the colonized, the enslaved, the noncitizen, and the animal – all reduced to type, all Others to rational man, and all essential to his bright constitution – is at the heart of racism and flourishes lethally, in the entails of humanism” (Haraway 2004, p. 18). Thereby, Haraway implies that the reduction of the proximity between the human and the non-human is capable to entail the undoing of boundaries that lie between the taxonomies and classes of humans and animals.
In Braidotti's (2002) theory the concept of the nomad is tightly connected with the idea of 'becoming' that she borrows from A Thousand Plateaus of Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Thus, in her theory the transgression of the boundaries between the human, the animal and the machine that leads to the emergence of the nomad is a form of becoming: becoming the other, moving “into the direction of the others of classical dualism” (Braidotti 2002, p. 119). As Braidotti (2002) observes, becoming is a tool to deconstruct “the dominant masculine, white, heterosexual subject-position” (p. 119). Thereby, Braidotti's nomad, that becomes the machine and the animal, challenges the domination of that group of people that has been considered dominant group since early modernity (such as white, male, middle- class). Thereby, in Haraway’s and Braidotti's theory bringing the human to the close proximity with the animal has the potential of producing the politics of no hierarchies and oppositions, while in Agamben's theory, the erasure of the distance between the human and the animal endangers the humanity and the rights of the human.
It is necessary to mention, that in Haraway’s (2004) theory cyborg emerges not only as a result of the crossing of the borders between the human and the animal, – it also appears as a result of the blurring of the boundaries between the living organism and the machine (p.
10). Haraway explains this boundary transcendence by the fact that modern machines, for instance those that are created on the model of human intellect, “are lively, too”. (Gane 2006, p. 141). She writes that the existence of machines that can imitate human thinking challenges the dualities of “natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally In this sense, Haraway’s idea about machines acquiring human intellect and consciousness and, thus, being in some way also alive corresponds with Braidotti’s (2002) observation of the fact that machines are human oriented in a sense that many of them imitate human nervous system, human consciousness and human information perception (p. 222).
Thereby, Haraway’s cyborg and Braidotti's nomad emerge as the result of scientific knowledge breaching in various ways the borders between the human, the animal and the machine by the fact that they identify the similarities between the human and the non-human and by technology’s intervention into human body, that influences human biological life functions and, hence, make human body akin to the machine.
My analysis of the meaning that Haraway ad Braidotti ascribe to machine in their philosophy drives me to the conclusion that in their theory machine is a facet of the Other.
According to Haraway and Braidotti, by science and technology breaches the borders of the human and give the capacity to the human to become the machine, the Other. This becoming implies the de-centralization of the human as the dominant Self of modernity and, hence, entails the destruction of the oppositions and hierarchies.
In Agamben's philosophy technology and science also affect human's sense of exception. However, in his theory the decentralization of the human entails the production of the animalized man, whose rights and humanity are suspended. Agamben (2002) names the process of the animalization of the human 'anthropological machine', and in this context machine stands for the rational, artificial entity that dehumanizes the human and deprives him of his mystery by reducing him to the animal (Oliver 2009, p. 235).
In Haraway’s and Braidotti’s theory, unlike Agamben's philosophy, machine does not threat the humanity, on the contrary, while the machine, along with the animal, is the other of the human, blurring of the borders between the human, the animal and the machine has the potential of bringing a new social order of no dominant Self and the Other, of no hierarchy of the human and non-human, of no opposition of zoe and bios. 2.3 Artificial Reproduction: Becoming Machine or Becoming Animal?
Haraway (2004) writes that the breaching of the boundaries between the human, the animal and the machine can exercise a positive influence: cyborg world, according to Haraway (2004) is a place 'in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints' (p.
13). Thus, cyborg ontology is capable of breaking hierarchies, dominant standpoints and oppositions. However, Haraway (2004) mentions the reverse side that the cyborg world may When discussing the negative sides of the world where the human, the animal and the machine are mixing into one creature called cyborg, Haraway (2004) observes the possibility of “final appropriation of women's bodies” (p. 28). She observes that “the situation of women in a world is so intimately restructured through the social relations of science and technology” (Haraway 2004, p. 25). Haraway (2004) does not elaborate on how exactly women’s bodies can be appropriated, however, in the interview with Gane (2004) she says that the fact that species interfere and are not taxonomically closed anymore is interconnected with various kinds of body instrumentalization and the existence of bio-capital (p. 144).
Moreover, Gane (2006) notes that in Modest-Witness, Haraway argues that life is getting commodified: according to Gane (2006), in Haraway's thought life “becomes a site of power Following Foucault's idea of bio-power, Haraway (2006) introduces the concept of 'techno-power': it is a form a biopolitics that “has not gone away, but … has been reworked, mutated, trans-ed, technologized and instumentalized differently.” (p. 148). In Haraway's thought techno-power differs from biopower by the fact that the exercise of techno-power on life is facilitated by bio- and medical technologies, and human life becomes a part of biocapital and, hence, is commodified. In her interview with Gane and in A Manifesto for Cyborg Haraway describes organ transplantation, genetic engineering and artificial reproduction as the examples of techno-power being at work. Braidotti (2002) also observes the fact that technologies become bio-technologies in a sense that technologies are getting more body- and organic life- oriented (p. 215).
Following Haraway's logic, it is legitimate to say that bio- and medical technologies intervene into human body and, thus, the inorganic blends with the organic, and the human whose body is intervened by medical and bio-technology, can be considered a cyborg. In such a case, surrogate mothers may be considered to be cyborgs as well, as their bodies are intervened by a range of biomedical technologies, and whose identities are compared by some scholars to those of machines (Niekerk & Zyl, 1995, p. 347). I agree that in the case of surrogate mothers what we deal with is not fully human. However, the cyborg that emerges due to the intervention of technologies to the human does not belong to Braidotti's and Haraway's cyborg world of the lack of oppositions and hierarchies that I described in the previous part of this chapter. On the contrary, I argue, that such a cyborg becomes inferior to fully humans, to those, whose humanity was not altered by the contact with either animals or In this section of Chapter 2 I want to discuss the paradox of surrogate motherhood that implies the fact that although surrogate mothers can be considered cyborgs as the integrity of their bodies is breached by technologies, however, they do not produce the politics of no opposition of the dominant Self and the Other, of no hierarchies.
To support my point about surrogate motherhood producing inequalities in society, I would like, firstly, to turn to the essay The Dialectics of Sex by Shulamith Firestone (1970).
In her essay, published about a decade earlier than Haraway's A Manifesto for Cyborg, Firestone (1970) claims that the oppression of women should be explained not only by different economic conditions of men and women, but also by the so-called fundamental, biological difference (p. 6, p. 8). This difference, according to Firestone (1970), is embedded in our reproductive systems (p. 11). Hence, she suggests that by the means of artificial reproduction, that would erase the biological difference between the man and the woman, it is possible to achieve equality in the society. Firestone (1970) calls the human to transcend his/her biology by the means of technology (pp. 10 – 11), however, as I said in Chapter 1, Agamben (2002) expresses anxiety about technologies taking the grip of human biological life: in his theory this means the animalization of the human and reduction of the human to I assume, that in the case of surrogacy Agamben's fear of technology's capacity to strip the human of his/her humanity is rather appropriate. While Firestone (1970) writes that the introduction of artificial reproduction would mean that human biology is not human destiny any more, and, in her vision, that would produce equality among men and women, however, Firestone's theory lacks the intersectional analysis. Perhaps, in 1970s she could not predict the fact that the access to reproductive technologies would be uneven and this asymmetry would be explained by race and class differences (Kessler 2009, p. 169). While Firestone (1970) claims that reproductive technologies can bring equality between sexes, she forgets about class and race division.
Documentary film Google Baby (2009) vividly performs how class and race differences are embedded in the asymmetry of the access to reproductive technologies. The film shows how low-class Indian women and working-class American woman act as surrogates for middle-class Israeli couples. Thus, the film supports the argument about race and class inequalities producing uneven access to reproductive technologies and even The film provides with the insights on how surrogate mothers become commodified and objectified. Thus, the bodies of surrogate Indian mothers are under surveillance of doctors: their freedom for movement is restricted, as they have to stay in the ward, their day schedule and diet are organized and designed by doctors.
The fact that in Google Baby (2009) surrogates come from India, a post-colonial Eastern country, and that surrogates' freedom to move is restricted, in my opinion, resonates with Achille Mbembe's (2008) description of slavery as a 'biopolitical experimentation' (p.
160). Firstly, Mbembe (2008) emphasizes the fact that slavery was race-based (p. 161).
Surrogacy can also be considered race-based: Google baby (2009) shows that it is women of former colonies, of certain color that do surrogacy not to exceed the limits of their biology, but to gain money for basic needs. Of course, it would be erroneous to claim that it is only non-white women who act as surrogate mothers. However, the number of surrogate mothers from the so-called third world is higher the number of women coming from developed countries (Hervey, 1998). In this sense, by pointing at racial factor at women's acting as surrogate mother, I mean not the skin color, but the belonging to the global East.
Secondly, Mbembe (2008) highlights the fact that “as an instrument of labor, the slave has a price. As a property, he or she has a value.” (p. 160) The fact that the slave could be bought echoes with the fact that surrogates can actually be bought as well: Google Baby (2009) performs that the younger the surrogate is and the better her health is, the more she Thirdly, Mbembe (2008) emphasizes the fact that “slave's life is possessed by the master” (p. 161) which implies that slaves life structure and freedom of movement depends on the decision of his master. In the same way surrogate's life is for 9 months dependent in Moreover, Mbembe (2008) writes that the slave is treated “as a mere tool and instrument of production” (p. 161). Meanwhile, surrogate mothers are treated as tools of reproduction. Nieker & Zyl (1995) point out that surrogates serve as incubators for fetuses (p.
347). Following Mbembe (2008) who compares slaves to instruments of production and claiming that surrogate mothers are instruments of reproduction, I cannot but refer to Chasin's (1995) observation of such machines as labor-saving devices and ATMs having identities similar to servants and slaves (p. 81). Thus, according to Chasin (1995), before the advent of labor saving devices the household work in the US was performed by people of color and immigrants (Chasin 1995, p. 81). According to Chasin (1995), the relations between hired housekeepers and their employers and the relations between labor-saving devices and their owners are similar in the sense that they are built on the model of subject-object relations (p.
The comparison between surrogates, slaves and machines (such as labor saving device or incubators) is useful for me to support the following claim: surrogate mothers, that, as I explained in the beginning of this chapter, can be considered what Haraway (2004; 2008) and Braidotti (2002) call cyborg or nomad, cannot produce the politics of no oppositions and divisions, as their labor is embedded in class and racial inequality. Besides, they are obviously dehumanized by the fact that what is at stake is their mere nutritive functions, and, hence, they are reduced to machines or to bare life .
If in Mbembe's (2008) analysis slavery is an example of biopolitics at work, then surrogacy can also be considered as an instance of biopolitics. While, from Mbembe's perspective plantation is a biopolitical space (p. 161) and the slaves are in Agamben’s parlance bare life, humans whose humanity is suspended, then in the case of surrogacy, the ward becomes a biopolitical space and surrogate mothers become bare life. Thus, I assume that if we can consider surrogate mothers to be bare life, then it is legitimate to claim that their turning into bare life is a result of the work of anthropological machine that I discussed in Chapter 1. Since in Agamben's theory bare life is produced due the erasure of the distance between the human and the animal and the target of human biology by technologies, surrogate mothers can be considered as the product of the work of the anthropological machine, because by the means of reproduction technologies their existence and labor is reduced to nutritive functions that humans share with animals. As I have mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, medical and bio-technologies, according to Braidotti (2002) construct the bodies of women who do surrogacy or donate their gametes as “the site of the natural” (p. 233). In other words, in the case of artificial reproduction, technology targets pure human biology, and, moreover, commodifies it. Thus, the grip on human biological life that medical and bio-technology get corresponds to a great extent with Agamben's anxious vision of technology managing human biological life. Agamben fears that along with managing biological life, technology also reduces the human to the animal. In the case of artificial reproduction, medical technologies bring up nutritive functions of human life, those functions that the human shares with the animal and, thus, reduces the human to Meanwhile, I assume, that surrogate mothers can still be considered what Haraway and Braidotti call nomads or cyborgs, as their molar, steady identity is challenged by the intervention of technologies in their bodies. Thereby, my idea of surrogate mothers being human with suspended humanity, bare life, the production of anthropological machine, challenges Haraway's and Braidotti's claim of cyborg and nomad being ontologies that produce the politics of no division of dominant Self and the Other. Surrogate mothers, as I have examined, serve as labor saving devices for other people, which entails the hierarchical relations between people-labor-saving devices and those who use their labor.
Although in this chapter I contested Haraway's cyborg and Braidotti's nomad as ontologies that give the politics of no oppositions. I refrain from labeling Haraway's and Braidotti's theory as irrelevant or utopist. In my opinion, it is necessary to mention that in Haraway's and Braidotti's theory the category the category of the human is used in the meaning of masculine, white domination, as opposed to animal and machine, that represent the Others of that white masculine domination. Thus, Styhre (2001) writes that “for Braidotti the notion of the nomad subject is employed to escape the hegemonic and exclusionary views of subjectivity offered by phallocentric thinking.” (p. 4). However, in Agamben's theory the category of the human is not gender-colored and that is, perhaps, the reason why the feminist thinkers and Agamben consider the breaching of the boundaries between the human, the machine and the animal in such a different way.
2. 4 Conclusion
In this chapter I have discussed the role that machines play in Haraway’s and Braidotti’s theory. Haraway (2004; 2008) and Braidotti (2002) introduce the ontology of cyborg and nomad, accordingly. These ontologies imply the blurring of the boundaries between the human, the animal and the machine. The ontology of cyborg and nomad produce, according to Haraway and Braidotti, a certain kind of politics. Thus, both Haraway (2004; 2008) and Braidotti (2002) write that the breaching of the boundaries between species and the undoing of fixed, molar taxonomies entails the undoing of hierarchies and oppositions between the dominant Self and the Other. However, turning to the case of surrogacy, a procedure in which technology intervenes into human body, and, hence, surrogate mothers can be considered as cyborgs or nomads, I claim that surrogate mothers do not produce the politics of no oppositions and divisions that Haraway (2004; 2008) and Braidotti (2002) write about. Using Mbembe's (2008) theory to draw a comparison between the surrogate mother, the slave and the machine, I claim that since surrogate mothers' labor is reduced by biomedical technologies to the functions of mere biological life and since the essence of the work of Agamben's (2002) anthropological machine is the reduction of the human to animal by the means of technology, surrogate mothers can be regarded as bare life, the production of the work of anthropological machine.
Chapter 3 Fukuyama: Redeeming the Human
3.1 Introduction
In chapter 2 I discussed how differently Agamben and Haraway and Braidotti consider the transcendence of the borders of the human, the animal and the machine. While in Agamben's (2002) theory what emerges when the boundaries of the human and the animal are breached is bare life, the human with suspended humanity, in Haraway's and Braidotti's philosophy it is the cyborg and the nomad, ontologies that produce the politics of no division on the dominant Self and the Other. Thus, Agamben (2002) regards science and technology's capacity to breach the boundaries of the human as dangerous, while Haraway (2004) and Braidotti (2002) claim that nomad and cyborg subjectivities can produce a new kind of politics of no hierarchies. In both philosophies the reduction of the distance between the human and the human is done by the means of sciences and the technologies that these In his book Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution contemporary political scientist Francis Fukuyama (2002) expresses the anxiety about the breaching of the boundaries between the human and the non-human that is quite similar to the one that Agamben (2002) expresses in The Open: Man and Animal. Fukuyama (2002) discusses how the breaching of the boundaries between the human and the animal, puts human animality, human biology at stake of economic, trade and social relations, and, hence, contributes to the creation of a biopolitical state (p. 155). Through his empirical research Fukuyama (2002) shows how in biopolitical state, where human health is a big value and a commodity at the same time, the access to health service and biomedical technologies is not equal due to class differences (p. 175). Thus, Fukuyama (2002) manages to observe what Haraway (2004) and Braidotti (2002) seem to omit in their analysis: biomedical technologies are not equally distributed. Given that, Fukuyama (2002) suggests that the uniqueness and exceptionality of the human should not be contested (p. 171), and biomedical technologies should stop revealing and targeting human biological functions and creating a market of services that are aimed at altering human biology (pp. 182- 183).
The argument of this chapter is that, although in his analysis Fukuyama (2002) , unlike Haraway (2004) and Braidotti (2002), embraces the fact of the unequal access to biomedical technologies, his theory, nonetheless, has a significant drawback: while he calls for setting strict boundaries of the human and not allowing technologies and sciences to blur those boundaries, his idea of taking the meaning of the human for granted can turn into the dehumanization of the human. In other words, Fukuyama's (2002) call to stop the erasure of the boundaries that lie between the human and the non-human, that seems to echo with Agamben's (2002) call to stop the work of anthropological machine that animalizes the human, can actually turn into nothing else but the work of anthropological machine, as taking for granted the notion of the human, can push certain groups of people outside of the borders To support my argument I will, firstly, discuss Fukuyama’s (2002) concept of human dignity that, as he claims, every human being possesses, and will explore whether Agamben (2002) uses any similar notion of what Fukuyama (2002) names human dignity. Secondly, I will discuss how Fukuyama engages with the question of the role of natural and medical sciences and modern technologies, especially biomedical technologies in the blurring of the boundaries between the human and the animal. Thirdly, I will explore what sort of politics in Fukuyama’s opinion the breaching of the borders between the human and the non-human may produce. I will compare his vision with that of Agamben, Haraway and Braidotti.
3.2 Human as an Uncontestable Category
Fukuyama (2002) writes that the fact that the modern science and technology identify within the non-humans the features that has always been considered only exclusively inherent in the humans threatens human dignity. In Fukuyama’s (2002) thought human dignity is equal to the possession of “Factor X” (p. 171). By “Factor X” Fukuyama (2002) understands the possession of all such qualities as “moral choice, or reason, or language, or sociability, or sentience, or emotions, or consciousness, or any other quality that has been put forth as a ground for human dignity” (p. 171).
This definition of what is Factor X that constitutes human dignity is rather imprecise.
However, I assume that Fukuyama (2002) gives such an imprecise definition of Factor X on purpose. In Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution Fukuyama (2002) traces how natural and medical sciences have been depriving the human from the features that used to be human-specific only. Thus, he writes that the findings in the field of ethology and primotology challenge the idea of culture and capacity for politics being only human-specific characteristics (Fukuyama 2002, p. 145); and the promises of computer scientists to create artificial intellect that would possess human consciousness calls in question whether consciousness is a human defining feature (Fukuyama 2002, p. 170). Since scientific inquiry perpetually challenges the idea of which characteristics are typical only for human beings, Fukuyama (2002) tends not give a concrete range of characteristics that define Fukuyama’s (2002) analysis of how various fields of science constantly undermine the unique status of specificity of this or that formally human-specific feature echoes with Agamben’s (2002) idea of perpetual work of anthropological machine which constantly updates the meanings of the human and the non-human by moving the border line separating the human from the non-human (p. 16). In Chapter 1, I have discussed the fact that natural and medical sciences contribute immensely to the work of anthropological machine. From my point of view, Fukuyama’s (2002) idea about sciences constantly updating our view of what is human –specific and what is not is parallel to Agamben’s (2002) idea of anthropological machine that perpetually produces new meanings of the human.
As the meaning of the human is challenged by the inquiries in the fields of natural, medical and computer sciences, Fukuyama (2002) refrains from giving a very concrete definition of the human, as it can be contested by any other finding in the realm of natural or Fukuyama’s (2002) rather abstract definition of Factor X, in my opinion, echoes with the conclusion that Agamben (2002) makes from Edward Tyson’s work treatise Orang- Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris: or, the Anatomy of a Pygmie: “man has no specific identity other than the ability to recognize himself (p. 26). I assume, that both Agamben (2002) and Fukuyama (2002) try to say that since various findings in different branches of science constantly challenge the notion of the human, the meaning of the human will always be Since Fukuyama’s (2002) theory is rather policy oriented in the sense that he suggests on how biomedical technologies should be regulated and what meaning the human should have in the times of flourishing biomedical technologies, he actually suggests that the humanity of the human should not be questioned at all. Fukuyama (2002) writes that every human a priori possesses the so-called Factor X: “every member of the human species possesses a genetic endowment that allows him or her to become a whole human being, an endowment that distinguishes a human essence from other types of creatures” (p. 171).
Fukuyama’s (2002) idea about human uniqueness despite any scientific evidence about the lack of human exceptionality, in my opinion, sounds quite similar to the theological idea of human uniqueness in this world. Fukuyama (2002) does not make direct references to any theological doctrines, however, in my interpretation of his work, he implicitly relies on Christianity, and this also makes his theory resonate with that of Agamben. In chapter 1 discussed how Agamben calls for religious immunization of the category of the human against scientific claims about human not having any significant difference from the animal.
Firstly, Fukuyama (2002) calls for theology, philosophy and politics to control the operation of biomedical technologies and the role of sciences in our life (p. 185). He writes that “it is only 'theology, philosophy, or politics' that can establish the ends of science and the technology that science produces, and pronounce on whether these ends are good or bad” (p.
185). Thus, Fukuyama (2002) actually claims that it is non-materialistic sciences, the sciences on the non-biological side of the human that should control the work of the materialistic sciences that are engaged with the research on human biology.
A similar sentiment Oliver (2009) observes in Agamben’s The Open: Man and Animal. Oliver (2009) writes that “Agamben diagnoses one of the central problems with scientific discourse as the tendency to reduce life to bare life by emptying it of all mystery and therefore its meaning. Without mystery, life is more like a functioning machine than an assembly of living creatures.” (p. 240). This quote brings me back to Chapter 1 of this work, where I discussed that one of the meanings of Agamben’s concept of the machine is the deprivation of the human of its celestial and lofty meaning, and the reduction of human existence to the mechanistic functions of nutritive life, such as reproduction, growth, Secondly, Fukuyama’s (2002) incline to appeal to religion as to the tool that can constrain the animalization of the human done by biomedicine, is reflected in his analysis of how various countries address the problems related to biomedicine. Fukuyama (2002) writes that many Asian countries “have not been nearly as concerned with the ethical dimension of biotechnology” as European countries (p. 192) Fukuyama (2002) explains this by the fact that Asian countries do not profess Christianity; he writes that “Taoism and Shinto are animalistic and invest both animals and inanimate objects with spiritual qualities” (p. 192), and “Buddhism conflates human and natural creation into a single seamless cosmos” (p. 192).
Thereby, Fukuyama (2002) concludes that there is an interconnection between religions that do not draw a distinct line between the human and the animal and the lack of concern from the side of the society that professes those religions about the operation of biomedical technologies which, in Fukuyama’s view, are capable to deprive the human from his dignity by reducing him to the animal (p. 192).
Thus, Fukuyama’s (2002) idea of the human dignity that is hard to define but that exists in every human being a priori, is inflated with religious idea of the mystery of the human being. In Fukuyama’s (2002) vision human dignity is endangered by natural and medical sciences and the technologies they produce. Fukuyama’s (2002) anxious sentiment about human being demystified by biomedicine resembles of Agamben’s idea about science fueling the work of the anthropological machine and reducing the human to the mechanic 3.3 Science and technology: erasing human complexity
Fukuyama (2002) engages with the discussion of the role of natural and medical sciences in the erasure of the distinctions between the human and the non-human in a way analogous to Agamben. While Agamben (2002) describes how the work of Edward Tyson on comparative anatomy of the ape and the human (p. 25) and Marie-Francois-Xavier Bichat's division of human life's functions on relational and nutritive (p. 14) contributed to the thought that the animal can be situated within the human, Fukuyama (2002) also observes that natural and medical sciences have reduced the gap between the human and the animal. Thus, he observes that Darwin's evolutionary theory challenged human’s exceptionality by suggesting that humans and animals share a significant number of features: with Darwin's evolutionary theory “many of the attributes that were once held to be unique to human beings, including language, culture, reason, consciousness, and the like – are now seen as characteristics of wide variety of non-human animals” (Fukuyama 2002, p. 144). Fukuyama also (2002) refers to the work of contemporary primatologist and ethologist Frans de Waal and his findings about chimpanzees that just like humans, can transmit culture from one generation to the other (p. 145). The conclusion that Fukuyama (2002) makes after analyzing how natural and medical sciences influence the shaping of the categories of the human and the animal is quite similar to that of Agamben (2002). Fukuyama (2002) writes that natural and medical sciences bring to the close proximity the animal and the human, and, hence, deprive the human from his exceptionality in natural world, by reducing him to the animals.
Fukuyama (2002) is preoccupied not only with the role that medical and natural sciences play in reducing the gap between the human and the non-human. Unlike Agamben (2002), Fukuyama (2002) engages with the question of the blurring of the boundaries between the human and the machine. He writes that while human consciousness used to be perceived as a human-specific feature that distinguishes humans from non-humans, there are computer and artificial intelligence scientists who are convinced that with more powerful computers and new approaches to computing, such as neural networks, we are on the verge of a breakthrough in which mechanical computers will achieve consciousness” (p. 166).
Like Haraway (2008) and Braidotti (2002), Fukuyama (2002) is interested in the breaching of the boundaries not only between the human and the animal, but also between the human and the machine. In Chapter 2 I discussed the fact that in Haraway’s (2004) theory technology is ubiquitous and it intervenes into human bodies (p. 12). Fukuyama (2002) is also interested in the fact how technologies intervene into human body. Fukuyama (2002) observes that neuropharmacology intervenes into human consciousness to regulate our emotions (p. 172). To do that, according to Fukuyama (2002), neuropharmacologies divide complex human emotions on good and bad (p. 172). Such a mechanistic division of complex human feelings and emotional experiences on simply positive and negative, according to Fukuyama (2002), threatens human dignity, as it endangers the complexity of human nature.
In the previous part of this chapter I have mentioned that Fukuyama’s anxiety about natural and medical sciences reducing the human to basic biological functions echoes with the meaning of Agamben’s (2002) anthropological machine that deprives the human of his mystery and celestial side and reduces to mere biology. Fukuyama’s (2002) idea about neuropharmacology that reduces the complexity of human feelings and emotions, I think, also fits into the essence of the image of the anthropological machine. Since, as Fukuyama (2002) claims, human emotions are an example of how human nature is unfathomable (p. 172), neuropharmacology applies such technologies that aim to disrupt the complexity of human nature and to mechanistically divide human emotions on good and bad.
However, when Haraway (2004; 2008) and Braidotti (2002) discuss the intervention of technologies into human, they discuss physical intervention entailed by such technologies as artificial reproduction or genetic engineering. The case of drugs that regulate human emotional condition described by Fukuyama (2002, p. 172-173), of course does not entail physical intervention into human body. However, both neuropharmacological drugs like Ritalin and Prozac and artificial reproduction are “technologies of life” (Rose 2007, p.17) .
Nicolas Rose (2007) writes that “technologies of life” are more than just equipment and techniques, such as brain imaging, or genetic testing, or surgical technologies to perform various kinds of transplantations (p. 17). In Rose’s (2007) opinion, technology is an ‘assemblage of social and human relations within which equipment and techniques are only one element” (p. 17). In Roses’s (2007) understanding “technologies …are hybrid assemblages of knowledge, instruments, persons, systems of judgment, buildings, and spaces, underpinned at the programmatic level by certain presuppositions and assumptions about human beings” (p. 17). In chapter 1 I argued that Rose’s (2007) definition of technology is applicable to describe what Agamben means by anthropological machine. The fact that Rose’s (2007) definition is applicable to both Fukuyama’s (2002) understanding of technology and the meaning of Agamben’s anthropological machine supports my idea about Fukuyama’s theory being an example of the operation of anthropological machine, as what Fukuyama (2002) writes about is nothing but the situation of the animal within the human by natural and medical sciences and the management of that animality or human biological life by the means of biomedical technology.
Thus, Rose (2007) writes that “technologies of life” seek “to refigure …vital processes themselves in order maximize their functioning and enhance their outcomes.” (p.17). Thus, just like artificial reproduction allows to choose a genetic parent for a child, and, hence, to enhance the genetics of the artificially conceived child, such drugs as Ritalin and Prozac, allow to muffle the so-called ‘bad’ human emotions that prevent people from Rose’s (2007) idea about technologies’ of life capacity to maximize the functions of human biological life resembles Haraway’s (2004) observation about the interconnection between bio-capital and instrumentalization and commodification of human life (p. 144).
Meanwhile, the fact that in bio-capital, the society where human biological life becomes part of the economy echoes with Agamben’s (2002) idea of technological control over human biological life as the consequence of the animalization of the human being (pp. 82-83).
3. 4 Technology and Inequality
Fukuyama (2002) claims that natural and medical sciences and the technologies they produce deprive the human of his uniqueness in contrast to other species. Unlike Haraway (2004; 2008) and Braidotti (2002), Fukuyama (2002) claims that the blurring of the boundary between the human and the animal will produce even more inequalities and hierarchies than the strict distinction between the human and the animal (p. 153).
Fukuyama (2002) writes that in the society where the human and the animal are brought to close proximity to each other, human biological life becomes at stake in the life of such a society. Fukuyama (2002) follows Nietzsche to identify the negative “consequences of modern natural science and the abandonment of the concept of human dignity” (p. 155): he writes that the animalization of the human will lead to the society in which human health becomes of primary importance (p. 155). According to Fukuyama (2002), the fact that society assigns a great importance to human health entails the problem of unequal access to health services and to biotechnologies that are proliferating nowadays (p. 155).
When Fukuyama (2002), following Nietzsche, mentions the society in which the human is animalized and human health becomes one of the most important objectives of the state, he implies nothing but the biopolitical state. Rose (2007) writes the in biopolitical state biotech and pharmaceutical companies become active and important participants in state economy, while human biological life becomes a commodity “that can be isolated, delimited, stored, accumulated, mobilized, and exchanged, accorded a discrete value, traded across time, space, species, contexts, enterprises” (p. 7).
In the previous part of this chapter I discussed that such a utilitarian attitude to human biological life is a vivid example of the side-effect of the operation of Agamben’s anthropological machine, when human’s so-called animality, or biological life, is targeted and managed by the means of technology. As I explored earlier in this chapter, Fukuyama (2002) writes that the way how biomedicine positions the human as an animal threatens human dignity (p. 159), however, he is also concerned by the fact that in biocapital society, where human biological life is what is at stake, the access to health services and medical Rose (2007) writes that in the society where human health becomes a part of state economy, the concern of medicine goes far beyond such tasks as ‘curing organic damage or disease” (p. 17) According to Rose (2007), in a biopolitical state the tasks of medicine and biomedicine engage the improvement of citizens’ health, the enhancement of their physical or health abilities, in prevention of the diseases they are susceptible to (p.26). In other words, in a biopolitical state, biomedicine offers a range of services that are not exclusively targeted at health problems, some of them are aimed at improving the quality of individuals’ lives.
However, as Fukuyama (2002) observes, the medical services with which the biocapital flourishes with are not accessible to everyone (p. 186).
When discussing the asymmetrical access to biomedical services, Fukuyama (2002) is interested in how in the future when genetic enhancement will come of age great inequalities among humans will emerge and will endanger the human dignity of those who do not have access to genetic enhancement (p. 157).
In Fukuyama’s (2002) philosophy the scenario when technology gets a grip of the human biological life, and human biological life becomes at stake of political and economic relations is possible only in the future. However, coming back to my discussion of the theory of Haraway (2008) and Braidotti (2002) in Chapter 2 of my thesis, I want to add that with the spread of reproductive technologies human life, human nutritive functions are already commodified, and the access to reproductive technologies is not even. I explored in Chapter 2, how those women who earn money by the means of acting as surrogate mothers, on the one hand, acquire an identity of the animal, since it is only the nutritive functions of their life that are engaged in this kind of labor. And, on the other hand, they acquire an identity of a machine, since they are not emotionally attached to the babies they bear and simply serve as incubators for embryos to mature. Thereby, in his futuristic forecasts of the inequalities that biomedicine can create among the humans, Fukuyama (2002) fails to see that these inequalities already exist, and they emerged due the asymmetrical access to reproductive Therefore, Fukuyama’s (2002) claim about the necessity to draw a red line that would separate the human from other species and would not allow the breaching of the boundary between the human and the animal, and the human and the machine is, most probably, outdated, as cyborg and nomadic subjectivities described in the theories of Haraway (2004; 2008) and Braidotti (2002) already exist. And while Fukuyama (2002) writes that it is necessary to preserve the animal as the other for the sake of preserving human’s humanity, the blurring of the borders between the human and the other (the animal and the machine) is Thereby, Fukuyama's (2002) idea of setting concrete boundaries of the human contradicts to the fact that these boundaries are already being transcended by such technologies as artificial reproduction, for instance. Coming back to Chapter 2, where I discussed surrogate mothers as cyborgs or nomads, whose identities are non-molar and not fixed, I claim that Fukuyama's call for establishing “bright red line” (p. 159) of the border of the human can be dangerous, because Fukuyama considers how in the future human's subjectivity will be influenced by biomedical technology. However, if we take surrogate mothers their subjectivities are already influenced by reproductive technology. When Fukuyama (2002) writes that human emotions constitute the major element of Factor X that distinguishes the human from other species (p. 170), surrogate mothers, for instance, may be pushed out of the category of the human based on the fact that normally they do not have an emotional attachment to expected baby (Niekerk & Zyl 1995, p. 348). As I claimed in the previous chapter, the subjectivities of surrogate mothers resonate with those of machines or animals. Hence, it is impossible to set a fixed border of the human, when this border is The idea of the precariousness of such a line sounds even more convincing if we turn back to the theory of Agamben (2002) in which he analyses how a range of discourses may construct the human as non-human, and how the category of the human is ceaselessly updated. Provided that the category of the human is changeable and unstable, I find Fukuyama's (2002) call for setting the distinct boundaries of the human to be unrealistic, if 3. 5 Conclusion
In this chapter I discussed how Fukuyama's (2002) analysis of natural and medical sciences and biotechnology's capacity to deprive the human of his sense of exceptionality is quite similar to Agamben’s (2002) concept of anthropological machine that animalizes the human and whose side-effect is technological management of human biological life.
However, Fukuyama's (2002) call for the creation of fixed boundaries of the human and “allowing the state to make sure that no one falls outside it” does not mean the stoppage of the anthropological machine and the dehumanization of the human. Since, for instance, the subjectivities of surrogate mothers can be considered as emerging in-between the human, the animal and the machine, the setting of fixed borders of the human, can lead to the dehumanization of surrogates and their turning into bare life, the human with suspended Conclusion
In this work I used Agamben's concept of anthropological machine to examine the role of technology in biopolitical state. In chapter 1 I concluded that this concept encompasses a range of meanings. Thus, anthropological machine stands for medical and scientific knowledge about the human, medical and biomedical technologies that target human biological life and the attitude to human biological life as to something close to the animal, and, hence, something inferior to the so-called relational life and something that can Engaging with the works of feminist thinkers Rosi Braidotti and Donna Haraway in chapter 1, I concluded that in their work the concept of the machine is used as a species with whom, just like with animals, humans are in constant interaction. In Braidotti's and Haraway's theory the distance between the human, the animal and the machine is reduced by a range of sciences and technologies, such as genetic engineering, reproductive technologies and cybernetics. While in Chapter 1 I observe that Agamben sees the breeching of the boundary between the human and the animal as a threat to the human, In chapter 2 engaging with the theories of Braidotti and Haraway, I discuss their claim about the fact that the erasure of the borders between the human, the animal and the machine offers a potential for the creation of a new type of politics, which would be deprived of the existence of oppositions, hierarchies and dominant Self. While in Agamben's philosophy the transcendence of the border between the human and the animal leads to the emergence of bare life – the human with suspended humanity and suspended human rights, in the theories of Braidotti (2002) and Haraway (2004) the transcendence of the borders between the species entails the emergence of the cyborg or the nomad, the ontological subjectivities that produce the world order without taxonomies and hierarchies.
However, I challenge Haraway's (2004) and Braidotti's (2002) vision about the kind of politics that the cyborg and the nomad can produce by discussing the asymmetric access to reproductive technologies that exists in the world, and how women for whom surrogacy becomes a form of labor gain the subjectivities of machines or animals.
While Braidotti (2002) and Haraway (2004; 2008) do not include the uneven access to reproductive technologies in their analysis, Francis Fukuyama (2002), to whose theory I turn in Chapter 3, offers an empirical research on how the access to biomedical technologies is not equal. In his theory the animalization of the human is interdependent with the existence of biocapital in which human health or, in Agamben's parlance, human biological life becomes a commodity and is engaged in economic, trade and social relations. That said, Fukuyama (2002) claims that in the society where human biology is at stake and where medical services and biomedical technologies are not evenly accessible, there is a risk of posing a threat to the human dignity of those who do not have the full access to medical services and biomedical technologies of biocapital. Thereby, Fukuyama calls for the necessity to foster the borders of the human by not allowing medical sciences and biomedical technologies to target human biology and to reduce the human to mere nutritive functions.
It must be pointed out that in my work I refrained from considering Fukuyama's (2002) political theory as a more adequate than the one of Haraway (2004) and Braidotti (2002). I emphasized the fact that Fukuyama's (2002) call for the drawing of the red line around humanity is rather problematic, since the example of surrogate mothers shows that some people, due to the intervention of biomedical technologies, already have unfixed, unstable identities, and the setting of certain borders/factors that would fence about the human, may lead to the risk of the dehumanization of people whose subjectivities have been destabilized by biomedical technologies.
My analysis of theories of Agamben, Braidotti, Haraway and Fukuyama makes me conclude that Agamben's concept of anthropological machine is a powerful and succinct metaphor for the description of a significant role that science and technology play in a biopolitical state. Thus, by targeting human biological life and having the capacity to manage it, they have the potential to refigure the meaning of the human and to move the borders of In my research I leave open the question about which of the two types of politics, the one that seeks to redeem the human or the one that aims at decentralizing the human is more humane. My thesis discusses that the politics of the redeeming of the human suggested by Fukuyama (2002) has the potentiality of turning certain groups of people into bare life.
Agamben’s (2002) notion of anthropological machine demonstrates how setting of the boundaries of the human for the sake of saving human’s humanity can turn into the production of bare life, the human that is stripped of his/her human rights. Meanwhile, the politics of unfixed subjectivities, of uncertain boundaries of the human and the non-human suggested by Braidotti (2002) and Haraway (2004; 2008) can also lead to the maintenance of hierarchical social relations. Thus, the problem of what type of politics has the potential to annihilate the opposition of the dominant Self and the Other remains the subject open for References
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