Die richtige Wahl

Biotechnologie, Selbstüberwachung & Identität

Abstract

This article extends the materialist critique of bio-capitalist structures and logics to not medically indicated, recreational uses of biomedical diagnostic information. The increasing biomedicalization of society changes our understanding of life, body, and self. The possibilities of intervening in the make-up of the body turns life into a controllable process, which only depends on the right choice and consumption of products. And this choice is produced by a commercial sector that has been described as bio-capitalist complex. Diagnostic tools that provide a new insight into the body have revolutionized the concept of health, making self-surveillance an integral part of everyday life. With the growing prevalence of diagnostic testing and its extension to recreational and everyday practices – from genetic testing to me- Health and wearables – bio-capitalist market structures pervade not only the understanding of the body but of the self. This article argues that the renegotiation of the body as bio-capital has extended to everyday identity practices that are not necessarily recognized as biomedical and biotechnological but follow nonetheless the logics that govern this biomedical-industrial complex.