Übersetzung eines Artikels von Thomas Lemke

Lemke, T. (2019). Foucault, política y error. Una revisión crítica de los estudios de gubernamentalidad (übersetzt aus dem Englischen von Maitén Vargas). Alvo Avellaneda, Guillermo Vega (Hg.), Conductas que importan. Variantes de análisis en los estudios en Gubernamentalidad, Corrientes: Editorial de la Universidad National del Nordeste, 55-75.

Gastvortrag von Joanna Radin (Yale University) am 05. Dezember 2019

Cryopreservation practices are an essential dimension of contemporary life sciences. They make possible the freezing and storage of cells, tissues and other organic materials at very low temperatures and their subsequent thawing at a future date without apparent loss of vitality. The ERC-funded research project CRYOSOCIETIES explores the implications of cryopreservation for temporalities and the concept of life. Hence, we are particularly excited to welcome Joanna Radin from Yale University here in Frankfurt. Joanna Radin has generated unique and groundbreaking analytical insights into the modalities and implications of freezing technologies and 'cryopolitics'. Her talk on December 5 will address “Cosmologies of Cold", sharing with us some of her internationally renowned research expertise in the realm of cryopreservation.

Joanna Radin is specialized in History and Sociology of Science, with a research focus on biomedicine and biotechnology. She has particular interests in global histories of biology, ecology, medicine, technology, and anthropology since 1945; history and anthropology of life and death; biomedical technology and computing; feminist, indigenous, and queer STS; and science fiction. Her work is central to understanding the role of cryotechnologies in current biomedicine and biotechnologies, particularly through her book Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood (Chicago 2017) which is “the first history of the low-temperature biobank". She is also co-editor, with Emma Kowal, of Cryopolitics: Frozen Life in a Melting World (MIT 2017), which considers the technics and ethics of freezing across the life and environmental sciences.

Der Gastvortrag findet am am Donnerstag, den 5. Dezember 2019, 16 Uhr c.t., im PEG-Gebäude, Raum 1.G 107 statt.

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Neuer Artikel von Katharina Hoppe

Hoppe, Katharina (2019): Donna Haraways Gefährt*innen: Zur Ethik und Politik der Verwobenheiten von Technologien, Geschlecht und Ökologie, in: Feministische Studien 37 (2), S. 250-268.

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Neuer Beitrag von Thomas Lemke

Der Beitrag geht von der These aus, dass sich in Foucaults Konzept einer „Regierung der Dinge“ Elemente eines posthumanistischen Konzepts von Materialität finden und fruchtbar weiterentwickeln lassen. Es ermöglicht ein anderes Verständnis von Biopolitik, das sich nicht mehr länger ausschließlich auf den »Eintritt der Phänomene, die dem Leben der menschlichen Gattung eigen sind«, bezieht (Foucault 1983, S.169). Diese wichtige theoretische Verschiebung enthält drei Dimensionen. Erstens ist eine Bewegung zu beobachten, die über das Konzept von Biopolitik mit dem Fokus auf die physische und biologische Existenz hinausführt, hin zu einer »Regierung der Dinge«, die die Verknüpfungen und Vermischungen von Menschen und Dingen, dem Natürlichen und dem Künstlichen, dem Physischen und dem Moralischen in Betracht zieht.

Zweitens vermeidet das Konzept des Milieus jedes einfache oder einseitige Konzept von Kausalität oder einen Fokus auf menschliches Handeln. Drittens sind in dieser Perspektive weder Natur noch Leben selbstevidente und stabile Einheiten oder Eigenschaften. In dieser Hinsicht ist (menschliches) Leben nicht etwas Gegebenes, vielmehr hängt es von Existenzbedingungen innerhalb und jenseits von Lebensprozessen ab.

Lemke, T. (2019). „More than human“. Nicole Burzan (Hg.), Komplexe Dynamiken globaler und lokaler Entwicklungen. Verhandlungen des 39. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Göttingen 2018.

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Cryosocieties: Suspended Life - Exploring Cryopreservation Practices in Contemporary Societies

Die Kryobiologie hat in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten einen enormen Aufschwung erfahren. Immer mehr Arten von Gewebe und zelluläres Material können eingefroren, gelagert und wieder aufgetaut werden, ohne einen nachweisbaren Verlust an Vitalität. Heute stellen kryobiologische Praktiken nicht nur eine wichtige infrastrukturelle Bedingung für viele medizinische Anwendungen und einen wesentlichen Motor biowissenschaftlicher Innovationen dar, sondern sie bilden zentrale Optionen für individuelle Reproduktionsentscheidungen ebenso wie die Erhaltung der globalen Biodiversität.

Das Projekt Cryosocieties untersucht die Auswirkungen der Kryokonservierung auf unser Verständnis des Lebens. Es geht von der These aus, dass kryobiologische Praktiken eine spezifische Form des Lebens hervorbringen, die wir „suspendiertes Leben“ oder im Englischen „suspended life“ nennen. Sie hält vitale Prozesse in einem Schwebezustand zwischen Leben und Tod, in welchem die biologischen Substanzen weder völlig lebendig noch gänzlich tot sind. Ziel des Projekts an der Schnittstelle zwischen Biologie, Soziologie und Technik ist es zu untersuchen, wie Kryopraktiken zeitliche und räumliche Beziehungen und Konfigurationen sowie unser Verständnis von Leben und Tod, Gesundheit und Krankheit, (Un-)Fruchtbarkeit und Nachhaltigkeit verändern. Thomas Lemke und sein Team werden in drei verschiedenen Kontexten untersuchen, wie „suspendiertes Leben“ in aktuellen Praktiken der Kryokonservierung hervorgebracht wird. Die Teilprojekte befassen sich mit dem Einfrieren von Nabelschnurblut als Vorbereitung auf spätere regenerative Therapien, mit der Kryokonservierung von Eizellen für Reproduktionszwecke sowie mit dem Aufbau von Kryobanken für den Erhalt bedrohter oder bereits ausgestorbener Tierarten.

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• Zur Projekt-Homepage
• Zur Projektbeschreibung auf den Seiten der Professur

LaSST: Lab for Studies of Science and Technology

The Lab for Studies in Science and Technology (LaSST) is an interdisciplinary research network established in 2019. It brings together sociological, anthropological and geographical expertise to investigate the complex challenges of technoscientific developments in contemporary societies. LaSST is dedicated to initiating collaborative projects in teaching and research, and aims at coordinating the activities of scholars working on science and technology at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and beyond.

LaSST hosts the MA program “Science and Technology Studies: Economies, Governance, Life" at the Goethe University Frankfurt. The program is coordinated by the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology, and invites students from inside and outside of Germany to apply.

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• Zur Lab-Homepage
• Zur Beschreibung auf den Seiten der Professur

Gastvortrag von Florence Caeymaex (University of Liège) am 07.11.2019

As a member of Ethics and Bioethics Committees and as a philosopher, I question how the institutionalization of Ethics has become part of our « ethical life » (Sittlichkeit), changing the meaning of Ethics itself and our expectations about it. Its institutionalization is often seen (and presented) as the result of a historical move within liberal societies — as a choice tool for a democratic "government of sciences and technologies" (Pestre, 2014). However, some tensions within the heterogeneous field of institutional ethical practices (which I will illustrate through two examples) challenge this view, asking for further inquiry into such « government ».

Drawing from Foucault's analysis of the neoliberal re-programming of the liberal governmentality as well as from more recent analysis of the neoliberal turn (W. Brown), I will try to show how some ethical practices are incorporated into a « governance » framework that both obfuscates its political significance and diminishes its democratic potential. On the occasion of this talk to social sciences scholars, I'd like to address the following question : how could we possibly build a historical & strategical understanding of the emergence of the ethical expertise at the turn of the 70's?

Florence Caeymaex teaches contemporary political philosophy at the University of Liège (Belgium). Her research in history of philosophy is dedicated to ethical and political aspects of both philosophies of life and philosophies of existence (Bergson, Canguilhem, Foucault, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty) ; her current research concerns the question of Ethics itself, in its relation to politics. This work is partly a reflection on her longstanding experience of Ethics committees within the domains of health and research. FC is vice-president of the Belgian Advisory Committee on Bioethics and of two Research Ethics boards at the University of Liège. She published a number of papers and book chapters of contemporary history of philosophy (mainly in French). Her last publication is a collected essays book on and with Donna Haraway, co-edited with Vinciane Despret and Julien Pieron (Habiter le trouble avec Donna Haraway, éditions Dehors, 2019, in French).

Der Gastvotrag findet am 7. November 2019, 16 Uhr c.t., im Raum PEG 1.G 107 statt.

Call for Papers für die Sektionstagung der Sektion „Soziologische Theorie“ der DGS vom 04. bis 05.06.2020

Die ökologische Frage stellt sich aktuell mit immer größerer Dringlichkeit. Neue soziale Bewegungen wie Ende Gelände, Extinction Rebellion und der Schüler_innenprotest Fridays for Future erlangen einen immer größeren Mobilisierungsgrad, sind global vernetzt und setzen klimapolitische Anliegen mit Nachdruck auf die Agenda. Berufspolitiker_innen sehen sich gezwungen Konzepte zum Umweltschutz (vom Klima bis zur Biene) vorzulegen und umzusetzen. Der privatwirtschaftliche Sektor – von der Landwirt_in bis zum Industriekonzern – versucht sich auf eine ökologische Transformation der Gesellschaft einzustellen und im besten Fall als zukunftsträchtiges Geschäftsfeld zu erschließen. Während Öffentlichkeit und Politik von der Wissenschaft eindeutige Fakten zu globalen Umweltproblemen erwarten, wird wissenschaftsintern immer klarer, dass dies kaum möglich ist, weil „die Umwelt“ im Anthropozän längst nicht mehr mit der „Natur“ der Moderne identisch ist.

Die geplante Sektionstagung will die mit der ökologischen Problematik und ihrer gesellschaftlichen Artikulation zusammenhängenden grundlagentheoretischen und gegenwartsdiagnostischen Fragen aufwerfen und auf die Agenda der soziologisch-theoretischen Reflexion setzen. In diesem Themenkomplex treffen sich heterogene konzeptionelle, wissenschaftstheoretische und zeitdiagnostische Fragestellungen, die eine allgemeine theoretische Reflexion und Kontextuierung erfordern.

Wir freuen uns über Abstracts zu diesen und verwandten Fragen bis zum 15. Januar 2020. Der CfP richtet sich explizit auch an Mitglieder anderer Sektionen und Disziplinen. Es geht darum, aus einer sozialtheoretischen Perspektive die ökologischen Fragen unserer Gegenwart zu adressieren.

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Buchvorstellung und Podiumsdiskussion mit Susanne Schultz und Peter Wehling am 31.10.2019

Das Konzept der Biopolitik markiert den gesellschaftlichen „Kampfplatz“, auf dem die Ausforschung von Lebensprozessen sich auf je besondere Weise mit der Formierung von Machtbeziehungen und Subjektivierungsformen verbindet. Doch inwieweit ist es geeignet, um die Analyse dieser Prozesse und ihres Zusammenwirkens in den Horizont einer kritischen Gesellschafts- und Kapitalismuskritik zu stellen? Im Gespräch: Helene Gerhards, Kathrin Braun, Susanne Schultz, Peter Wehling und Alex Struwe. Die Buchvorstellung und Podiumsdiskussion finden am 31.10.2019 um 20.00 Uhr in der Karl-Marx-Buchhandlung, Jordanstr. 11, Frankfurt, im Rahmen des Kolloquiums Biotechnologie, Natur und Gesellschaft statt.

Das Buch versammelt konstruktivistische Perspektiven auf das Konzept „Biopolitik“. Dadurch werden die Analysepotentiale für aktuelle Phänomene, die den Zusammenhang zwischen dem Leben und dem Lebendigen und der Regierbarmachung betreffen, ausgelotet. Im Fokus stehen die Strategien und die Objekte der Regierungs- und Regulierungsbemühungen: In welcher Weise werden gesellschaftliche Probleme konstruiert und bestimmten „Zielscheiben“ zugeschrieben? Welche Subjektivierungsformen lassen sich im Rahmen biopolitischer Zugriffe ausmachen? Inwiefern spielen spezifische sozialtheoretische Überlegungen und Konzeptionen von Zeit für biopolitische Strategien und Konflikte eine Rolle? An welchen Gegenständen sind die fortdauernden Konflikte, die sich im Spannungsfeld zwischen Medizin, Ethik und Politik ergeben, zu explizieren?

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Zur Publikation

Neuer Artikel von Thomas Lemke

Der Beitrag stellt Ausgangsüberlegungen des Projekts CRYOSOCIETIES vor, das vom Europäischen Forschungsrat gefördert wird. Das Projekt untersucht die sozio-materiellen Dimensionen der Sammlung, Lagerung und Nutzung von menschlichem und nicht-menschlichem organischen Material durch Verfahren des (Tief-)Kühlens und Gefrierens – die sogenannten Kryotechnologien. Es geht von der Annahme aus, dass kryobiologische Praktiken eine spezifische Form des Lebens hervorbringen: ›suspendiertes Leben‹ (›suspended life‹). Dessen Eigenart besteht darin – so die These des Projekts –, dass es vitale Prozesse in einem Schwebezustand zwischen Leben und Tod hält und konventionelle Zeit- und Raumkonzepte rekonfiguriert.

Im Mittelpunkt des Beitrags steht die Vorstellung der drei empirischen Teil­pro­jek­te, die untersuchen, wie ›suspendiertes Leben‹ in aktuellen Praktiken der Kryo­kon­servierung hervorgebracht wird. Bei der ersten Fallstudie geht es um das Feld der regenerativen Medizin und das Einfrieren von Nabelschnurblut, die zweite fo­kus­siert auf individuelle Reproduktionsentscheidungen bzw. das zeitliche Hinaus­schie­ben der Realisierung des Kinderwunsches durch das Einfrieren von Eizellen; die dritte Fallstudie beschäftigt sich mit der Einrichtung sogenannter ›Frozen Zoos‹ zum Erhalt bedrohter Tierarten. Das Fazit am Schluss stellt noch einmal die zen­tra­len Merkmale und die Herausforderungen des aktuellen Forschungsvorhabens dar.

Lemke, Thomas (2019). Beyond Life and Death. Investigating Cryopreservation Practices in Contemporary Societies. Soziologie, 48. (4), 450-466.

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Symposium und Workshop vom 11. bis 12. Oktober 2019

In a striking way, at the very moment intelligent machines are supposed to become a reality, the question what it means to be human and what sociality entails seems to become the focal point in the call for a 'human centered' robotics and AI. While recent research more and more demonstrates that robotics and AI often perpetuate gender and racial biases along with social power relations, the question arises how bias and interests built into robots and programmed into AI, both intentionally and unintentionally, can be identified and deprogrammed. Engaging with these questions, decolonializing, feminist, queer, crip and other critical scholars have emphasized the need for a more just and inclusive future of AI and robotics.

The aim of this symposium is to bring together scholars from different fields of study, opening up the space for truly multi-disciplinary engagements with AI promising to provide us with points of departure for relating responsibility, accountability, and social justice as well as 'our' history, present, and future with AI differently. In doing so, the symposium will not only emphasize the crucial need for including manifold perspectives and reflecting on who is allowed to be part of these discussions and developments, but also aim at opening up the space for concrete interventions.

Symposium

11 October 2019 | Renate von Metzler-Saal | Campus Westend | 9am - 6pm

Keynote address: Mitali Thakor (Wesleyan University) on „Robotic Flesh: The Racial Erotics of the Real"
 

Workshop

12 October 2019 | SH 5.101 | Campus Westend | 10am - 2pm
 

Organizers

Josef Barla (Goethe University Frankfurt) | Pat Treusch (TU Berlin) | Christoph Hubatschke (University of Vienna)

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Workshop vom 17. bis 18. September 2019

We are living in multiple bio-political potentialities, futures resonating ideas of life-as-it-could-be. Life and bodies seem to have become the materialization of various biotechnological utopias. For fifty years, assorted technologies for human genome editing and DNA repair/ recombination have been used. Particular techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9, TALENs, and zinc finger nucleases have been employed significantly in human genome editing and DNA repair in recent years. The current applications of genome editing and DNA repair technology have provoked significant attention and raised a number of ethical and legal questions. We analyze various economies of hope, hype, expectations, politics, and poetics of promises and better or worse predictions or moral panic from the point of view of sociology, anthropology, and science and technology (STS) studies. Miscellaneous futurities, as material-semiotic reconfigurations, are present in the topics of the current genome editing technologies. We will discuss concrete research cases, fieldwork, projects, and analyses.

Based on encounters with anthropology, sociology, STS, bioethics, and biotech sciences, we meet to bring together various views on questions like:

• What kinds of biotechnological utopias, spaces of hope and hype, visions, and social innovations do we face today in the context of human genome editing technologies?
• What kind of objects, un/real, bio-objects, bio-digital, bioinformatics life these emerging technologies represent and constitute? How can we analyze, explore this situation? What methodological dilemma are we facing in this context?
• What modes of de/politicization are involved in the context of editing genome technologies? Which medicalized social problems are mirrored and created by contemporary editing genome technologies? How personalized medicine does stratify groups of potential patients?
• And what political and ethical implications and ramifications do these “problem settings" have?

The workshop "We, new utopians/Genome editing and echoes of future life" will be held at Goethe university, research group Biotechnologies, Nature and Society and LaSST (Lab for Studies of Science and Technology), 17-18 September, room SH 5.106, organized from Dr. Eva Šlesingerová, Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow.

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• Ankündigung
• Agenda

Organisation, Technik und Geschlecht

Eva Sänger hat einen Ruf angenommen und tritt zum 01.01.2020 die Professur für „Organisation, Technik und Geschlecht" an der Humanwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität zu Köln an.

Neuer Beitrag von Thomas Lemke

Lemke, Thomas (2019). Going Further: Lebensformen, Politics, and Critique. In: Graw, I. & Menke, C. (Hg.), The Value of Critique. Exploring the Interrelations of Value, Critique, and Artistic Labour, Frankfurt am Main/ New York. Campus: 120-125.

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Neuer Artikel von Susanne Schultz

In this paper, we argue that target-driven population policy enables the return of technical solutions to reproductive health challenges in the form of long-acting reversible contraception (LARC). We examine two Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) commitments related to promotion of the injectable contraceptive Sayana Press and the implant Jadelle. These efforts reintroduce controversial contraceptive methods (Depo-Provera and Norplant); involve public-private partnerships between donors, governments, NGOs and Big Pharma; and facilitate capital accumulation from contraceptive sales in the global South. We employ a demopopulationist lens to highlight the use of neo-Malthusian ideology to justify reducing population growth and engineering population composition. In a geopopulationist frame, Sayana Press and Jadelle reinforce unequal geographies in which the Global North serves as a space of technological innovation and policy-making, and the poorest countries in the Global South, including many in Africa, serve as the laboratory for clinical trials, interventions in fertility, and capital extraction. Finally, the way these contraceptive technologies are promoted harks back to the biopopulationist promise of improving life itself.

Daniel Bendix, Ellen E. Foley, Anne Hendrixson & Susanne Schultz (2019). Targets and technologies: Sayana Press and Jadelle in contemporary population policies. Gender, Place & Culture; A Journal of Feminist Geography.

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Neuer Beitrag von Jonas Rüppel

This guest editorial opens with a brief overview of the transformations of medicine and mental health that can be observed since the second half of the twentieth century. New genetics and biotechnologies hold out the promise of overcoming presumed limitations in the field of mental health care, that is, the fact that diagnostic procedures in psychiatry and clinical psychology still largely rely on the narratives of patients and questionnaires, supposedly subjective assessments by physicians and psychologists. It is envisioned that innovative genetic and proteomic tools, (neuro)imaging technologies, and objective laboratory tests for blood biomarkers will enable better diagnosis and treatment of mental diseases. We argue that emerging biotechnologies do not revolutionize mental health, despite their promise to do so. Instead, we observe a pluralization of research and treatment approaches in the domain of mental health. The second part of this editorial discusses the contributions to this special issue on emerging biotechnologies and mental health and outlines how they address some of the gaps in social studies of psychiatry and mental health in the twenty-first century.

Rüppel, Jonas und Voigt, Torsten H. (Hg.) (2019) Special Issue: The Death of the Clinic? Emerging Biotechnologies and the Reconfiguration of Mental Health. Science, Technology, and Human Values, Vol. 44, Issue 4.

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Neuer Artikel von Eva Šlesingerova

Tendencies and efforts have shifted from genome description, DNA mapping, and DNA sequencing to active and profound re-programming, repairing life on genetic and molecular levels in some parts of contemporary life science research. Mirroring and materializing this atmosphere, various life engineering technologies have been used and established in many areas of life sciences in the last decades. A contemporary progressive example of one such technology is DNA editing. Novel developments related to reproductive technologies, particularly embryo editing, prenatal human life engineering, and germline engineering need to be analyzed against the broader social and structural background. The crucial analytical scope for this paper is a specific field: the life-editing technologies used in reproductive medicine and performed experimentally on viable human embryos, particularly CRISPR/Cas9 technology. This text argues that germline editing technologies, as a representative part of contemporary biomedicine, are merging ideas of treatment and enhancement to avoid future risks.

Using this specific life manipulation of embryos and gametes, the text analyzes these processes within the concept of power over life—biopower and the specific governing rationality that imagines, classifies, and governs contemporary societies. The text specifically focuses on the potential to create, define, and manage future risks and uncertainties related to prenatal life.

Šlesingerova, Eva (2019). In risk we trust/Editing embryos and mirroring future risks and uncertainties, In: Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy/A European Journal.

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Neuer Artikel von Katharina Hoppe

Problems posed by the 'Anthropocene' have caused many feminists to rethink a feminist ethics in a post-anthropocentric vein. In this context, a reconceptualization of the notion of responsibility as response-ability or ability to respond has gained crucial relevance. This article reads ethics of response as feminist takes on problems posed by the Anthropocene, but also as attempts to conceptualize a non-normativist ethics working with and beyond post-structuralism. The theoretical challenge faced by a feminist post-anthropocentric ethics, the article argues, was posed by feminist philosopher Rosi Braidotti as a confrontation of 'affirmation versus vulnerability'. In revisiting this debate, the article situates the notion of response-ability and outlines the theoretical questions which must be dealt with by an ethics of response: an integration of affirmation and negativity on one hand, and the question of the ethical and political implications of thinking from constitutive relationality on the other hand.

By drawing on the work of Isabelle Stengers, the article maps out one possible conceptualization of an ethics of response-ability in more detail. It introduces the etho-ecological practice of responding as composing with otherness, which enables us to conceptualize the notion of response-ability as a concept underpinning a post-anthropocentric, feminist ethics for the Anthropocene.

Hoppe, Katharina (2019). Responding as Composing: Towards a Post-anthropocentric, Feminist Ethics for the Anthropocene, in: Distinktion. Journal of Social Theory.

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Gastvortrag von Prof. Jenny Reardon (Santa Cruz) am 12.06.2019

The Postgenomic Condition: Truth, Race and Justice After the Genome: At the end of the last millennium, the proposal of the Human Genome Diversity Project and the immanent publication of Herrnstein and Murray's (1994) controversial bestseller, The Bell Curve, sparked worries that the new science of genomics would reignite scientific racism.   Since WWII, human geneticists have labored to distance the study of human genes from eugenics and the Nazi regime.  Would those efforts, and the possibility of a genomic account of human differences, be undone before  human genome research had even really begun?  To avert this possibility, in the wake of the sequencing of the human genome—or the postgenomic era—genome scientists and their supporters proposed a new 'democratic' approach to genomics.  In several high profile cases, they offered to give back to “the people" the power to define themselves, and to control use of their DNA.  Yet the problem of race and racism persisted.  This talk explains how and by what means debates about 'race' and racism have remain central and formative of the postgenomic condition.

Gastvortrag von Prof. Jenny Reardon (University of California, Santa Cruz) am Mittwoch, den 12.06.2019, 16 Uhr c.t., Raum SH 3.106. Der öffentliche Gastvortrag zum Thema „“The Postgenomic Condition: Truth, Race and Justice After the Genome“  erfolgt auf Einladung des Schwerpunkts Biotechnologie, Natur und Gesellschaft.

Englische Übersetzung von Thomas Lemkes Monographie „Eine Kritik der politischen Vernunft – Foucaults Analyse der modernen Gouvernementalität"

The main thesis of the book is that there is a major transformation in the problematics of power in the work of the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault which is rarely taken into account. In the centre of this »theoretical displacement« (Foucault) is the notion of government, that is mainly developed in the – still unpublished – 1978 and 1979 lessons at the Collège de France. I try to reconstruct this problematics of government by presenting material which is until now only available on audio tapes in the Foucault archive in Paris and which will appear here for the first time. These lessons are essential to understand Foucaults change of the project of the History of Sexuality and his later interest in pre-Christian forms of subjectivity. It is also essential to make sense of his later differentiation between power and domination and the question of bio-politics.

Lemke, Thomas (2019). A Critique of Political Reason. Foucault's Analysis of Modern Governmentality, London: Verso.

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Neuer Beitrag von Thomas Lemke

Lemke, Thomas (2019). Von Sandkörnern und Stolpersteinen. Ein bescheidener Vorschlag zur Zukunft der Science and Technology Studies. In: Laboratory: Anthropology of Environment / Human Relations (Hg.), After Practice. Thinking through Matter(s) and Meaning Relationally, Vol. I. Berlin: Panama Verlag, 116-124.

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Gastvortrag von Prof. Martijn Konings (University of Sydney) am 23.05.2019

After the financial crisis of 2007-08, many commentators declared the end of neoliberal, speculative finance and the return of Keynesian policies dedicated to financial suppression and the promotion of real economic growth. As we know, this shift failed to materialize - but it often seems as if those same commentators are now more concerned to emphasize the absurdity of this failure than they are to account for the actual shape of the present by connecting the political volatility of the past decade to the logic of post-crisis capitalism. This talk challenges the idea that the recent history of capitalism is comprehensible on the basis of a distinction between “good finance" (i.e. finance that works in the service of productive activity) and “bad (speculative) finance" and argues that a speculative element is at the very heart of the logic of capital. The good finance / bad finance distinction is often associated with the work of Hyman Minsky, and in this talk I argue that there is another side to Minsky's work, one that appreciated the speculative nature of economic life in general and is very useful for developing not only a different political economy interpretation but also a critical social theory of present-day capitalism.

 
Guest lecture by Prof. Martijn Konings, (University of Sydney) Thursday, 2019.05.23, 4 p.m., PEG Room  1.G107, Campus Westend: „The Speculative Logic of Capitalism. Or, Hyman Minsky as a Social Theorist“ Kolloq. Biotechnologies, Nature and Society Research Group.

Martijn Konings is Professor of Political Economy and Social Theory at the University of Sydney. His publications include The Development of American Finance (Cambridge University Press, 2011), The Emotional Logic of Capitalism (Stanford University Press, 2015), Neoliberalism (with Damien Cahill, Polity, 2017), and Capital and Time (Stanford University Press, 2018). With Melinda Cooper he edits the Stanford University Press Currencies: New Thinking for Financal Times; and with Lisa Adkins and Melinda Cooper he is leading a research project on the logic of the contemporary asset economy.

Neuer Artikel von Franziska Verschuer

Cryonics denotes research into and the practice of deep-freezing dead bodies for resuscitation in a technologically advanced future. This article discusses the technoscientific practice and rationality of cryonics, focusing on two aspects in particular: the ways in which conceptions of life and death and their relation are being reconfigured, and the cryonic understanding of personality and its relation to the body. It complements the range of topics discussed in the literature on cryonics by adopting a feminist perspective and placing particular emphasis on the importance of taking into consideration the materiality, processuality and relationality of life and death in the cryonic imaginary. The analysis draws on Rosi Braidotti's adaptation of the conceptual pair of bios and zoe in order to demonstrate that cryonics is premised on the humanist separation of the human as a purely cultural being from 'Nature' as his materially determined other(s).

The article argues that cryonics seeks to preserve not only individual lives, but also the increasingly challenged humanist conception of human life as exceptional, self-contained and independent of Nature. The notion of dezoefication is introduced to encapsulate the desire to disentangle the human from (his) nature. Finally, the analysis is complemented with Donna Haraway's approach to a relational ontology, which emphasizes the vulnerability that is associated with relationality. It thus accounts for the humanist bias against relationality and the fear of death as 'becoming other', which are considered to be constitutive of techno-utopian projects such as cryonics.

Verschuer, Franziska (2019). Freezing lives, preserving humanism: cryonics and the promise of Dezoefication. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory.

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Neuer Artikel von Jonas Rüppel

Since the completion of the Human Genome Project, personalized medicine has become one of the most influential visions guiding medical research. This paper focuses on the politics of personalized medicine in psychiatry as a medical specialty, which has rarely been investigated by social science scholars. I examine how this vision is being sustained and even increasingly institutionalized within the mental health arena, even though related research has repeatedly failed. Based on a document analysis and expert interviews, this article identifies discursive strategies that help to sustain this vision and its promises: “complexity talk," “extension," and “boundary work." These practices secure its plausibility, protect it from criticism, and maintain stakeholder support.

Rüppel, Jonas (2019). „Now Is a Time for Optimism": The Politics of Personalized Medicine in Mental Health Research. Science, Technology & Human Values.

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Interview mit Katharina Hoppe im Rahmen des hr-iNFO Politik-Podcasts

Mit Gretas Schulstreik fing alles an. Im Dürre-Sommer 2018. Mittlerweile gehen weltweit Schülerinnen und Schüler Freitag für Freitag auf die Straße statt in die Schule, um für mehr Klimaschutz zu demonstrieren. An der Spitze der Protestbewegung "Fridays for Future" auch in Deutschland: junge Frauen. Und bei den Protesten sind mehr weibliche Demonstrierende auf der Straße als bei den meisten Demos sonst. Woran liegt das? Am Thema? An Greta?

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Neuer Beitrag von Katharina Hoppe

Hoppe, Katharina (2019): Wahrsprechen und Bezeugen. Politik der Wahrheit nach Michel Foucault und Donna Haraway, in: Renate Martinsen, Oliver Marchart (Hg.): Foucault und das Politische. Transdisziplinäre Impulse für die politische Theorie der Gegenwart, Wiesbaden: Springer/VS, S. 161-183.

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Neuer Beitrag von Thomas Lemke

Lemke, Thomas (2019). „Eine andere Vorgehensweise“. Erfahrung und Kritik bei Foucault. In: Marchart, O & Martinsen, R. (ed.), Foucault und das Politische. Transdisziplinäre Impulse für die politische Theorie der Gegenwart. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 23-48.

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Gastvortrag von Prof. Jörg Niewöhner (Humboldt-Universität Berlin) am 31.01.2019

Gastvortrag von Prof.  Dr. Jörg Niewöhner,  (Humboldt-Universität Berlin) am Donnerstag, den 31.01.2019, 16 Uhr c.t., Raum PEG 1.G 107: Der öffentliche Gastvortrag zum Thema „Situating biologies - co-laborating with the enemy of critical thought?“ erfolgt auf Einladung des Schwerpunkts Biotechnologie, Natur und Gesellschaft.

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