Reflections on Bionormativity
“If as many Google- enabled robotic devices get installed as Google hopes, Google may soon know the contents of your fridge, your heart rate when you’re exercising, the weather outside your front door, the pattern of electricity use in your home”
Bernard Harcourt – Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age
Authentication and Verification: Defining the Problem
Throughout his career, one of the central concerns for Foucault’s work was to investigate, analyze and offer a genealogical account of truth-telling as a mode of subjectivation. The notion of Biopolitics implies many different ways of conceiving the modern problem of truth-politics and its historical constitution. It is important to understand that truth can no longer be spelled with a capital “T”; it has now become the object of calculation, production and fabrication. Truth has become a consumer-product, it remains relevant only in so far as it can catalyze the accumulation of capital. The modern practices of truth-extraction take one of their more hideous forms, when they begin to operate on human subjects. Biometric technologies are beginning, or perhaps have already begun to play a role of increasing importance in this process. The old Marxist problem concerned with the commodification of human labor has now reached a new level when the body itself risks becoming another item on the menu. One that employers will soon be able to select, compare, assess through risk and purchase for profit. The anthropometric, medico-legal artefacts will allow for the conversion of persons into human-material, a series of bio-mass units with market-value attached to each one. The workers’ average life-expectancy i.e. their health, has a direct impact on the longevity of the firm. It will therefore be “in the interests of” both employees and managers that the company would have access to their medical files. And this is only one out of numerous similar possible scenarios.
Disentangling bodies from power is the technique of Biopolitical critique. A distinction must be made between separation versus disentanglement. The latter does not imply the possibility of a final solution. What follows a biopolitical disentanglement is a re-arrangement of power-relations without the utopian pretense of abolishing power as such, not even in the limited sense of applying it to particular cases. Because even within a limited telos and a particular problem in mind, we as subjects are constantly overdetermined by power. This is the Foucaultian micro-physics of social interaction. But far from a fatalistic outlook, such a framework implies that resistance can likewise be found everywhere. Biometric technologies present us with the perfect “opportunity” — for lack of a better term — to demonstrate how power can be observed and exposed in its operations using the Foucaultian paradigm. The word technology is something that needs to be unpacked in its own right. This term will be re-occurring throughout our discussion in a layered mode.
It just so happens that we are speaking here both of biometric technology as well as a technology of the self. The first meaning is quite clear following the usual custom, whereas the latter should be traced along the lines of (without perfectly coinciding with) the term — governance; or governmentality. Gouvernementalité refers to a collection of meta-actions, the purpose of which is to direct the actions of others. It is not very difficult to see that technology is a very effective technology, precisely in this layered understanding of technology not only as human artefact, but also as an instrument for limiting, inciting, manipulating, threatening or otherwise conducting the conduct of other humans.
According to Btihaj Ajana, the literal meaning of the word biometrics is ‘measurement of life’. Biometrics;
“refers to the technology of measuring, analyzing and processing the digital representations of unique biological data and behavioural traits such as fingerprints, eye retinas, irises, voice and facial patterns, body odours, hand geometry and so on” (Ajana 2013, 3)
Pugliese offers the following definition:
“Biometric systems are technologies that scan a subject’s physiological, chemical or behavioural characteristics in order to verify or authenticate their identity” (Pugliese 2010, 2)
Both authors (our main sources on the biopolitics of biometric technologies) lay a particular emphasis on the dual notions of verification and authentication. And it seems that the entirety of the discourse concerning the measurement, or the capture of life that is – ‘bio-metrics’, would revolve around these two central concepts.
If authentication serves the function of “grounding” the subject, so to speak; of making sure the data matches the person, then verification refers to the grid of bionormativity involved in binding the one to the other. These are quite different relations even though they are often difficult to tell apart. And they almost always work together. The first implies the seemingly matter-of-fact question of whether ‘x’ is who she claims she is, a matter of determining a non-virtual referent of the biomarker, the second ensures that all the data concerning the subject, it’s internal virtual coherence, remains consistent. I.e. that she is indeed of this gender, of that nationality, of some hair-color, height etc. Bionormativity refers to the entire set of governmental practices and institutions that implement and conduct the deployment of biometrics together with the discourses that legitimize their normalization.
Foucault refuses to essentialize the self and offers instead a historico-deconstructive account of subjectivity. According to Foucault, we are the products of historical technologies; of various techniques of self-constitution. But it is not a finite, nor a finitely determinable set of institutions which produce and reproduce the self in a causal manner. They operate instead like Wittgensteinian language-games that constantly crisscross and overlap, overdetermined through family-resemblances.
Foucault identifies economic governance as the mode of neoliberal subjectification, truth-formation and self-constitution. The market operates simultaneously as a mode of verification, subjectivation and governmentality. There are forms of authentication and verification that are particular to neoliberalism and the modes of authentication and verification specific to biometric technology. The latter can easily be seen as enhancing the former. They may in fact fit like links in a chain. The question we are seeking therefore, is the following:
How do biometric technologies figure and play into the neoliberal agenda of commodifying human life and extracting the biological “truth” about human subjects in terms of their capacity to work and foster economic growth?
Pugliese’s astonishing and evidently much underrated work on biometric technologies begins by tracing the genealogy of biometrics in order to unhinge the sedimented assumptions concerning their neutrality, transparency or objectivity. To show that they are in fact programmed with prejudice and normative values. Biopower operates through biometric technologies by inserting the body (the biological substratum of the subject), into a mathematical algorithm. This is another distinct feature of the bionormative; this particular regime of truth is carried out through the algorithmization of life and in this way it is directly connected to Ajana’s definition of biometrics as ‘the measurement of life’.
“The ways by which the body is transformed into processable, storable and retrievable information are numerous and among the most notable ones are the techniques of genetic fingerprinting, DNA typing and the growing field of bioinformatics. In all of these techniques, what is enabled is the process of acquisition, storage and analysis of biological information via algorithmic and computational methods whereby new forms of knowledge production are generated and in which the notion of ‘body as information’ is salient” (Pugliese 2010, 7)
Extending Neoliberal Hyper-colonization: The Theory of Human Capital
The notion of the homo oeconomicus is crucial for understanding the Foucaultian analysis of the neoliberal theory of human capital. One of the defining features of neoliberal analysis of labor is that the worker is no longer simply a variable in a production function and in fact, she is no longer even only a consumer, at this point, the laborer has become an enterprising individual who is also a producer. This final point of “complete objectification”, of laying the capitalist measuring rod directly on the subject then turns out to be, in a way the other extreme of control: the complete subjectification of the work-force. We are now concerned with the subjective experiences of those who work for us. Homo oeconomicus marks a new object of fascination for governmentality, where it is now concerned with the subjective relationship of the person to himself as potential capital. This marks a completely new dimension for the intrusion of neoliberal governance into previously unexplored i.e. non-commodified territory. Where do biometric technologies figure in this equation?
Let us read from Foucault’s 1978–1979 lectures on biopolitics:
“How is human capital made up? Well, they say, it is made up of innate elements and other, acquired elements. Let’s talk about the innate elements. There are those we can call hereditary, and others which are just innate; differences which are, of course, self-evident for anyone with the vaguest acquaintance with biology. I do not think that there are as yet any studies on the problem of the hereditary elements of human capital, but it is quite clear what form they could take…” (Foucault 2008, 227)
Foucault is clearly hinting here at the possibility of what others have rightfully termed Free-Market Eugenics. To return to the example discussed before, disturbing enough as it is to conceive that our employers could access our highly sensitive personal information during the selection process, the application of similar processes of surveillance, scrutiny and capitalization to our genetic material, is truly frightening.
Nonetheless, these are the prospects we are facing by agreeing to the normalization of biometric technology i.e. bionormativity. Foucault continues:
“genetics makes it possible to establish for any given individual the probabilities of their contracting this or that type of disease at a given age, during a given period of life, or in any way at any moment of life. In other words, one of the current interests in the application of genetics to human populations is to make it possible to recognize individuals at risk and the type of risk individuals incur throughout their life” (Foucault 2008, 227)
The notion of risk in this case is non-trivial. It is precisely through the neoliberal conceptual apparatus of risk and scarcity that Foucault makes the final adjustment showing how one’s genetic make-up could determine one’s social standing in a competitive environment that the homo oeconomicus inhabits. It is the notion of risk that operates as a relay between genetics and market analytics. Between biology and economic governance. This is precisely the space where biometric technologies would be “plugged in”, perhaps quite literally.
“when we can identify what individuals are at risk, and what the risks are of a union of individuals at risk producing an individual with a particular characteristic that makes him or her the carrier of a risk, then we can perfectly well imagine the following: good genetic make-ups — that is to say, those able to produce individuals with low risk or with a level of risk which will not be harmful for themselves, those around them, or society — will certainly become scarce, and insofar as they are scarce they may perfectly well enter, and this is perfectly normal, into economic circuits or calculations, that is to say, alternative choices. Putting it in clear terms, this will mean that given my own genetic make-up, if I wish to have a child whose genetic make-up will be at least as good as mine, or as far as possible better than mine, then I will have to find someone who also has a good genetic make-up. And if you want a child whose human capital, understood simply in terms of innate and hereditary elements, is high, you will see that you will have to make an investment, that is to say, you will have to have worked enough, to have sufficient income, and to have a social status such that it will enable you to take for a spouse or co-producer of this future human capital, someone who has significant human capital themselves” (Foucault 2008, 228)
Resistance: Bypassing the Market with the Hermeneutics of the Subject
Though our lives are becoming exceedingly commodified and we are becoming increasingly enterprising, power itself can, and through the Foucaultian lens, must harbor multiple possibilities for resistance. Where would one begin the process of desubjectivating the self? We mentioned previously that the neoliberal logic tends to infiltrate areas that were previously thought to be free from competition, enterprise and commodification. Searching out “the remaining” spaces that tend to be less dominated by market-mechanisms would be one approach. Exploring abnormal or deinstitutionalized areas and establishing alternative communities. Experimenting with drugs, writing, isolation, art or other unconventional forms of experimentation and limit-experiences; unlocking the hidden capacities of the body i.e. martial arts etc.
But on a deeper level, we must understand the discourse, the rhetoric, various forms of legitimation that biotechnocrats have and will draw upon to normalize biometric surveillance. In other words we must identify, to the best of our ability, the contemporary episteme[1] of our age. But with a particular emphasis in mind: How does science privilege rationality over spirituality, how is it, that rationality itself is becoming part and parcel of institutionalized oppression?
The answer lies in another series of lectures given by Foucault at the college de France entitled The Hermeneutics of the Subject. Once again, we must focus on two very important and very different, if not altogether contrasting concepts encountered in the lectures: The Gnothi seauton[2] and the Epimeleia heautou[3]. Whereas the first might be directly representative of the contemporary episteme, the latter may offer us a way to undermine the former and open up the possibility for a parresiastic counter-conduct against bionormativity. Unfortunately, things are not that cut and dried. Foucault appears to say that the care of the self may in fact hold the truer meaning of what the know thyself was supposed to have been in actual practice. We must keep in mind, that both of these terms emerged in ancient antiquity, they existed side by side. The care of the self is therefore not inherently or by default an alternative to the know thyself. The relationship is more complex.
Socrates, for instance is said to have been regurgitating both the one and the other. At times he speaks of the gnothi seauton, at others, of the epimeleia; quite interchangeably. Foucault suggests that the care of the self was the basis, the grounding principle of the ‘know thyself’ and he offers a kind of revival of the care of the self, which seems to have been “overshadowed” by the gnothi seauton.
“I think this question of the epimeleia heautou should be rescued from the prestige of the gnothi seauton that has somewhat overshadowed its importance” (Foucault 2005, 8)
What is it then, about the injunction of the Delphic oracle that bears the trace of our contemporary techno-scientific age? And how does it serve its purpose in the normalization of biometric artefacts? How will the above-mentioned revival help counter its effects?
Firstly, epimeleia heautou is frequently encountered among Hellenistic thinkers; the Stoics and the Romans. But contrary to what the bulk of Foucaultian scholarship chooses to over-emphasize, both parresia[4], as well as the care of the self (two non-mutually exclusive notions), are encountered throughout history, from Socrates to the Christian fathers.
“the notion of epimeleia heautou (care of oneself) has a long history extending from the figure of Socrates stopping young people to tell them to take care of themselves up to Christian asceticism making the ascetic life begin with the care of oneself” (Foucault 2021, 10)
The event that marks the differentiation and a separation of the epimeleia from the gnothi seauton is what Foucault termed the “Cartesian Moment” (Foucault 2005, 14). Foucault argues that it was precisely the Cartesian moment that marked the final overthrow of the care of the self in favor of the ‘know thyself’. It marks a particular threshold, a historical point of transformation of the relationship between subjectivity and truth, or as we mentioned earlier; a bifurcation in the politics of truth. From this moment on, gnothi seauton would mean something very different without its complementary epimeleia heautou.
Foucault distinguishes ‘knowledge’ from ‘spirituality’. The first denotes the Socratic precept transformed though the Cartesian moment and refers to the kind of knowledge that is given to the subject, without its acquisition involving any kind of training or self-transformation. A kind of inert self-evidence that does not involve an explicit practice as a condition of access to truth. It is devoid of the care for the self. The latter notion of spirituality, on the other hand, serves precisely to circumscribe those practices and day-to-day regimens, various rituals or techniques of the self that do involve the care of the self. They dictate ‘what needs to be done in order to know what needs to be known’.
“the epimeleia heautou (care of the self) designates precisely the set of conditions of spirituality, the set of transformations of the self, that are the necessary conditions for having access to the truth” (Foucault 2005, 17)
The contemporary episteme marks the final break between knowledge and spirituality. The initial separation however, was not the Cartesian moment and strictly speaking, there was no clearly demarcated period where spirituality was no longer present in the subject’s relation to the truth. It was a gradual and somewhat discontinuous process, which is marked by several moments in history dating back to the early Christian fathers and the gnostic school of Neoplatonic thought; in short, the break between knowledge and spirituality was initially theological and only later became ‘properly’, so to speak, scientific.
How are we to conceive then, and find the connection between the privileging of knowledge over spirituality as the epistemic ancestor of scientism and the discourse which serves to normalize the use of biometric technologies for administrative purposes? How does bionormativity inhibit our ability to care for ourselves? This is a big question, for now we can only hint at the possibility of answering it. The contemporary episteme is based on the idea, that technology is the material manifestation of scientific reason. And that the application of technology to nature therefore produces truth. “We” believe that measurements are accurate, that they do not impose a regime of truth, but rather reflect the truth of reality. In this sense, we can (somewhat crudely) anticipate the possibility of a parresiastic engagement with the biometric security apparatus[5] by demonstrating that biometric technologies are parasitic on the enlightenment discourse rooted in the Cartesian and Christian Neoplatonic legacy of a particular technology of truth and verification, which was handed down to us later as the impartial bystander or the objective spectator. Instantiated further in, and as — ‘the truth of modern technology’.
We can therefore refuse to identify with our digital duplicates and initiate a resistance movement whose goal will be to subvert the neoliberal agenda of reducing human life to the gnothi seauton, the abstract knowledge of Big-Data and statistical databases. A variation on the anti-realist stance in the philosophy of science could prove useful in the struggle against bionormativity, understood as the contemporary deployment of a particular governmentality and another arbitrary rule, a new technique for binding “Truth” to Subjectivity.
Notes:
[1] Foucault uses the term episteme to refer to a collection of concepts, ideas or systems of knowledge the define a given age. The term is explained in The Order of Things.
[2] The famous Socratic precept: “Know thyself”
[3] A term popularized by Foucault and often presented by Foucault as an alternative to Gnothi seauton, the meaning is: “Take care of yourself”
[4] Parresia can be translated as “truthful speech” or “courageous talk”. It is a part of the care of the self. Its goal is to subvert illegitimate institutions by ‘speaking truth to power’. For examples of parresia in Christian thought, see Foucault’s 4th volume of the History of Sexuality: Confessions of the Flesh.
[5] It is quite unfortunate that we did not have the time to explicitly address Foucault’s lectures Security, Territory, Population and the problem of the security apparatus. Biometric technologies provide the perfect case example for the study of the role of the notion of security in neoliberal governance.
Bibliography:
1. Ajana, Btihaj. Governing through biometrics: The biopolitics of identity. Springer, 2013.
2. Foucault, Michel, Arnold I. Davidson, and Graham Burchell. The government of self and others: Lectures at the Collège de France 1982–1983. Springer, 2010.
3. Foucault, Michel. Security, territory, population: lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–78. Springer, 2007.
4. Foucault, Michel, Arnold I. Davidson, and Graham Burchell. The birth of biopolitics: lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. Springer, 2008.
5. Foucault, Michel, Robert Hurley, and Gros Frédéric. Confessions of the Flesh. UK: Penguin Books, 2021.
6. Gros, Frédéric, Michel Foucault, Graham Burchell, François Ewald, Alessandro Fontana, and Arnold I. Davidson. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981–1982. Trans. Burchell, G. New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2005.
7. Harcourt, Bernard E. Exposed: Desire and disobedience in the digital age. Harvard University Press, 2015.
8. Pugliese, Joseph. Biometrics: Bodies, technologies, biopolitics. Routledge, 2010.