Politics of Feasibility and Compatibility: Governing TechnoNatural Food Things and Their Future

• In Event: Future of Politics and Politics of the Future - II

Abstract

Food is and will be political. What is it, which politicizes in and around food? It is mainly its natures and technologies – and their reconfigurations. When TechnoNature of food is problematized, this indicates and opens up ever-new negotiations, dissent and controversies. The paper investigates reconfigurations (Lucy Suchman) of nature and technology and their relations in the area of consumption, regulation, research and innovation of food. Those reconfigurations promise to make food more sustainable, natural, healthier, personalized or simply better. They answer in one way or another to the urgence (Michel Foucault) of dealing responsibly with (future) food. What specific ways of governing are realized within those observed reconfigurations? By using a discourse analytical approach and referring to empirical cases (e.g. conscious organic consumption, GMOs, agricultural robotics) the paper argues, that the currently dominant answer to the question of how to govern food responsibly – now and in the future – lies in a productive (in the Foucauldian sense) way of doing, making and reconciling. By showing how Ethopolitics (Nikolas Rose), Ontopolitics (Annemarie Mol) and Technopolitics (Andrew Barry) specifically put into practice a governmentality of feasibility and compatibility, the paper contributes to the concept of government as well as ‘the Political’, and tackles questions of how current and future foods are governed. The paper also discusses how critique might be possible within the dominant paradigm of making and reconciling things.

Author

• Laura Trachte, Technical University Munich, MCTS