Rendering Life Dieable: Reconfiguring Mosquitos, Biocapital, and Technobiopower

• In Event: Nonhuman Innovations, Nonhuman Disruptions - III: Death & Ethics

Abstract

Mosquito borne diseases are increasing dramatically worldwide. The question how to tackle medical, environmental, and societal issues associated with this development through the use of science and technology becomes increasingly important. Among the most promising methods are technoscientific strategies through which vectors themselves become to embody the knowledge of the management of infectious diseases. Turning to two current examples—MosquitoMate’s Wolbachia-infected mosquito and Oxitec’s transgenic mosquito OX513A—this paper explores how death is put to work in order to safe lives, transforming not only the very meaning of capital but also of power. If it is true that with the rise of the technosciences in the late 20st century we can also witness a shift from biopower to technobiopower, then exploring the deployment of technoscientifically altered mosquitos employed as a living public health technology might tell us something about the workings of technobiopower in the context of today’s technosciences. In order to answer this question, this paper explores how in both cases life is not only remade as a patented commodity but also as being ‘dieable’. Rendering life dieable irritates the very idea of biocapital as something that refers to animals that are alive but killable in order to be economically exploited by shifting the perspective on death as that which entails value. Here, life is technoscientifically (re)created in order to die. Instead of killing mosquitoes, more mosquitoes are produced that are both forced to live and forced to die at the same time in order to fulfil their purpose.

Author

• Josef Barla, Goethe University Frankfurt