Wertkörper

Zur Ökonomisierung des menschlichen Körpers im Zeichen von Globalisierung und Neoliberalismus

Abstract

Recent advances in the fields of genomics and biotechnology have greatly expanded the discretionary autonomy of human beings over their bodies. Biology has so become a new and alluring terrain for the enlightenment project of self-realization and selffulfilment. These developments have been co-evolving with the global expansion of neoliberal capitalism. This article states that there is a common logic at work in both areas, leading not only to the emergence of a global market in biological materials but also to a re-calibration of the biology of human life into lively capital. For this reason, the new „freedom“ of constructing the body according to one’s own preferences and desires in a dialectical inversion entails new obligations and constraints. In the end, only the technologically enhanced human body is fit for the neoliberal world of social cut-backs and can avoid being consigned to a new, this time biologically defined underclass.