Science, Seeds, and Cyborgs: Biotechnology and the Appropriation of Life

Drawing on an impressive wealth of evidence, Science, Seeds and Cyborgs challenges the legitimacy of genetic engineering. This prescient book highlights countless scientific flaws in many of the recent developments in agriculture, medicine, and new reproductive technologies, and shows that the degree of uncertainty involved in genetic manipulation is far greater than is generally assumed.

Science, Seeds and Cyborgs then explores the social and ethical implications of genetic engineering. Bowring argues that the current cultural obsession with the idea of cyborgs encapsulates society’s biotech vision and ultimately the victory of a technocratic consciousness. We are entering a mechanical civilization in which feelings of sympathy and affection, moral ambiguities, cosmic doubts and inexpressible convictions are nothing but obstacles to the rapid circulation of data and the harmonious reproduction of technological systems. If this cybernetic vision succeeds, biotechnology achieves its final triumph: the abolition of subjectivity and the adaptation of humans to an inhuman world.

Finn Bowring is a Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. He is the author of André Gorz and the Sartrean Legacy.