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H. <strong>Zwart</strong>the use of a new generation of ‘‘anthropotechnologies’’that may redefine what we are and what we maybecome. This development is bound to pose unprecedentedchallenges to philosophy, completely resettingbiopolitical and bioethical agendas. According toSloterdijk, the question is whether philosophy (stilldominated by the humanistic convictions of the past)is ready for these challenges. Yet, in order to assess thepresent and explore the future, we must begin at thebeginning. How did we become the type of humanbeings we currently are in the first place?The process of anthropogenesis, Sloterdijk argues,is intimately connected with processes of domesticationand self-domestication. The house (domus inLatin) must be regarded as a ‘‘biopolitical complex’’(p. 322) that set the stage for the process of anthropogenesisto take place. Besides taming ‘‘other’’ animals,we also managed to tame ourselves, the animal‘‘within’’. This involved training, but also otherdomestication techniques such as selection (throughuneven prospects for reproduction). This ‘‘bottom-up’’and time-consuming process—bottom-up in the sensethat in took place in houses and villages rather thanthrough political institutions—resulted in a particulartype of human being. In ‘‘humanistic’’ accounts of howwe came to be what we are, this virtually unexploredpre-history of self-domestication is often ‘‘repressed’’,ignored or eclipsed.Another important chapter in the history ofanthropogenesis was the emergence of literacy. Sloterdijkdescribes how in the context of the RomanEmpire the art of writing opened-up practices of theSelf that allowed individuals to distance themselvesfrom the ‘‘mass media’’ of the day, notably amphitheatres,where spectators were entertained withspectacular and atrocious shows. The reading andwriting of letters and books allowed ‘‘friends of thealphabet’’ to develop a much more humane, lessboisterous counter-culture. And this literacy-basedcounter-culture of epistolary networks for exchangebetween like-minded friends involved Stoics likeSeneca as it did Christians like Saint Paul.According to Sloterdijk, it is obvious that literacypresupposes self-domestication. Only people whoinhabit a house (be it a roman villa, a monastery ora bourgeois mansion) are able to (learn to) write andread. All the typical attributes of literacy, of readingand writing (a chair, a table, a library, etc.), as well asrelated activities (such as walking or having aconversation in a garden) presuppose the existenceof a house that may contain letters and books. Even achurch is basically a house built for the purpose ofreading (one particular) book. And the same goes, ofcourse, for schools. A school is a house that isbasically constructed for the purpose of learning toread (and perhaps also to write) books—similar to theway in which universities are premises where individualslearn to read and write scholarly papers. Untilrecently, moreover, schools were erected for thepurpose of learning to read particular types of book,notably books that were part of the national culturalcanon, written in a more or less artificial nationallanguage that tended to differ from the various verbaldialects spoken at home or in the local village. Thus,literacy not only involved the introduction of newtools for self-enhancement (the acquisition of newcommunicative skills), but also a replacement and recontextualisationof the process of ‘‘producing’’ andshaping human beings, from homes and hamlets tonovel types of buildings, directed towards disciplineand control. This also resulted in new forms ofselection. The individuals (pupils) involved in theseschool-type practices could well be regarded asobjects and targets, rather than as subjects of theprocess.According to Sloterdijk, however, we are nowentering an era in which new possibilities for selectionand self-enhancement present themselves, forinstance in the form of pre-natal selection, in thecontext of IVF. Increasingly, and contrary to what wassuggested in Huxley’s novel Brave New World, thisprocess is individual-driven, rather than state-driven,and will allow individuals to occupy the ‘‘subject’’rather than the object pole of the process. Theythemselves are the ones that will be increasinglyexposed to a proliferation of technology-based opportunitiesfor reproductive choice. This is not bydefinition a pleasant situation, far from it. Accordingto Sloterdijk, contemporary human beings clearlydisplay a profound uneasiness towards these newpossibilities for exerting biopower, and rightly so, forthese possibilities seem much more powerful andconsequential than the ones we have been able tosufficiently familiarised ourselves with in the past (p.328). Yet, according to Sloterdijk, instead of decidingto refuse to use these new possibilities for biopower atall—which may well be our first impulse, but also adead alley and a form of escapism -, we rather should123
From Utopia to Scienceface the challenge of formulating a new codex for theuse of emerging anthropotechnologies (p. 329).Whether and to what extent these new anthropotechnologieswill bring about a dramatic change of humanphenotypes and genotypes, through a conscious shiftfrom reproduction ‘‘fatalism’’ to genomics-basedselection, may still be an open question as yet, butshould nonetheless become a major issue of concern.As Kant already indicated, it is typical for humanbeings to be confronted with question they seemneither able to resolve nor to ignore, and the issuesraised by newly emerging anthropologies clearlyseem to fall under this heading.At the same time, Sloterdijk reminds his readers ofthe fact that such issues are not completely withoutprecedent. In a number of dialogues, notably Politikes,Plato already deliberates on issues involved inthe management and amelioration of humankind. InPlato’s view, the ancient polis emerges as a kind ofhuman park, where enlightened aristocrats see it astheir responsibility to govern human reproduction in arational manner for the benefit of the state. Thus, thepolis emerges as a kind of hatchery where humanbeings are produced—an ancient precursor of Huxley’sBrave New World. According to Sloterdijk, thequestion is not whether we will decide to useemerging anthropotechnologies such as prenatalselection or gene therapy in the future—there canbe no doubt that we will—but rather how we are toorganize their use in such a way that humanindividuals may become the ‘‘subjects’’ rather thanthe ‘‘objects’’ of the process, the authors rather thanthe targets of these emerging bioexperiments.A similar perspective has been voiced by MichelFoucault in 1976, when the notion of biopower wasintroduced by him, and once again in 1984 with theintroduction of the notion of the ‘‘care for the Self’’.In 1976, he explored how, in the 19th century, nationstates began to take an interest in (or rather, todevelop serious concerns regarding) the physicalwell-being of their populations, notably of the lowersocial strata. These concerns were driven by theconsideration that the physical well-being of themasses (in terms of health care, food, housing,hygiene, etc.) constituted a major factor of economicand military importance. Various biopolicies weredesigned for the purpose of monitoring and improvingthe physical condition of large numbers of people.Thus emerged the concept of public health. From thisperspective, individuals were the objects or targets,rather the authors or initiators, of biopolitics. In 1984,however, a different perspective was opened-up.Now, Foucault became interested in the practicesindividuals themselves may engage in to shape andmanage their own life and care for their own bodyand health. Like Sloterijk, Foucault indicates that thisshould not be seen in terms of an Either/Or: todomesticate or to be domesticated. This was ratherthe way in which the issue was framed by Plato,building on a dichotomy, a basic distinction betweentwo types of human beings, namely aristocrats andslaves, those who can and those who cannot reasonablybe granted the responsibility to care for themselvesas well as for others. According to Plato, thisdichotomy represented a ‘‘natural’’ distinction,almost amounting to a demarcation between twodifferent subspecies. In the view of authors such asNietzsche, Foucault and Sloterdijk, however, thingsare much more complicated. Domestication of othersand of ourselves are processes that are complementaryand closely connected. In various situationsindividuals may occupy various positions. Bothbiopolitics and care for the Self, both domesticationand Self-domestication constitute pivotal dimensionsor axes of the pastoral complex. We cannot ‘‘decide’’whether to domesticate or be domesticated, to bedisciplined or to manage our own life, as we arealways involved in both processes. Rather, thequestion is how to assume the subject-position asconsciously as possible. In the face of newly emergingbiotechnologies, how can we really positionourselves in such as way that we will be able toinfluence and govern our own future, both asindividuals and as societies? According to Sloterdijk,the humanistic response, a discourse that basicallyrejects the newly emerging anthropotechnologies asbeing at odds with and as constituting a threat tohuman ‘‘dignity’’, can no longer be expected toprovide us with viable answers. The ‘‘post-human’’response rather argues that our ‘‘dignity’’ resides inthe fact that we can be, and often have been, in aposition that allows us to form and reform ourselves,with the help of a broad range of techniques, fromreading and writing letters and diaries up to prenataldiagnostics. Our ‘‘essence’’ resides in our ability toshape, manage and transform ourselves. We havenever been satisfied with ourselves, we have alwayskept working on ourselves, always interested in123
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