Bio-art et transhumanisme : une anthropologie des limites

Abstract

The invention of the concept of bio-power by

Foucault opens a space for thinking about the contemporary

articulation of biology, the diffuse forms of

power or control, as well as the construction of subjectivities.

The work of the bio-artist, far from being merely a

denunciation of the societies of control or an utopia of an

“augmented man”, reveals the ambivalence of biotechnologies,

in the mode of “pharmakon” (Stiegler) : at the same

time, both “remedy” and “poison”. Contradictorily,

biomachines allow both an increase in the power to act

and plasticity, but also, simultaneously, a recolonization

of lives, even by the normativity of performance and

growth. Is this then a will to power and a wish to improve

living conditions, in the wake of the ideologies of

progress, or rather a desire to finish, the “tiredness of

being oneself”?