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Synthetic Biology As a Postmodern Technology of Care.

In recent years, synthetic biology emerged as a potentially ground-breaking biotechnology, promising breakthroughs in healthcare, biodiversity conservation and bioremediation. Combining various technoscientific methods, synthetic biology consists in the application of engineering principles to biolo...

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Published in:NanoEthics Vol. 19; no. 2; pp. 1 - 15
Main Author: Fulvi, Daniele
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Aug2025
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        au: Fulvi, Daniele
        affil: https://ror.org/01p2zg436 Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University Node of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology, Locked Bag 1797, 2751, Penrith, NSW, Australia
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        Biological Sciences Biochemistry and Cell Biology
        Biotechnologies
        More-than-human life
        Postmodernism
        Synthetic biology
        Technologies of care
      ab: In recent years, synthetic biology emerged as a potentially ground-breaking biotechnology, promising breakthroughs in healthcare, biodiversity conservation and bioremediation. Combining various technoscientific methods, synthetic biology consists in the application of engineering principles to biology, which is seen as unsatisfactory and perfectible. This methodology makes synthetic biology a postmodern technology of care, namely the political practice of refashioning biology to improve the condition of both human and more-than-human beings. Emphasising the disciplining dimension of care (in the Foucauldian sense of creating ‘docile bodies’), I show that synthetic biology consists in the application of such a dimension to more-than-human lifeforms. That is, I critically highlight how synthetic biology, in its attempt to design novel and functional organisms, seeks to actually produce lifeforms that are ‘ontologically disciplined’ since they possess a simplified and controllable biological structure. The argument I advance in this paper sheds light on how care in the postmodern world is increasingly becoming associated with the simplification of complex biological systems, namely with the production of bioengineered organisms that are fitter to face current global challenges. Care, therefore, operates as a form of ontological disciplining by inscribing predetermined ways of being within the genetic code of more-than-human organisms.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
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    language: English
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