Biocitizenship fetichism

Abstract

The notion of a unique turn of Western modernity in the ways of engagement between politics and life has brought the idea of a political landscape dominated by authoritative discourses promoted by an array of biological disciplines, techniques and technologies. Under such a scenario, the emergence of a concept of biological citizenships seems a required analytical tool for social sciences. This article poses a limitation to the reach of such analytical tools. Based on experiences with mobile goat herders from de Chilean Norte Chico, and urban advocates of milk-free diets, biocitizenship does not seems to be a good descriptor of political agency among the communities of goat herders, and even when it seems to be, the biological engagement of citizenship turns out to be artificial and product of a fetishization process through a resource of naturalization termed atavism. Additionally, we argue that a similar process affects the concept of biopolitics itself, fetishized through the ethnocentric idea of a special uniqueness of Western modernity, which in turns deprives social sciences of any goal oriented to understand societies and deprives citizens of means to change them.

The notion of a unique turn of Western modernity in the ways of engagement between politics and life has brought the idea of a political landscape dominated by authoritative discourses promoted by an array of biological disciplines, techniques and technologies. Under such a scenario, the emergence of a concept of biological citizenships seems a required analytical tool for social sciences. This article poses a limitation to the reach of such analytical tools. Based on experiences with mobile goat herders from de Chilean Norte Chico, and urban advocates of milk-free diets, biocitizenship does not seems to be a good descriptor of political agency among the communities of goat herders, and even when it seems to be, the biological engagement of citizenship turns out to be artificial and product of a fetishization process through a resource of naturalization termed atavism. Additionally, we argue that a similar process affects the concept of biopolitics itself, fetishized through the ethnocentric idea of a special uniqueness of Western modernity, which in turns deprives social sciences of any goal oriented to understand societies and deprives citizens of means to change them.