SYNBIOTICS, ANARCHY OF EXCEPTION AND

NECRODEVELOPMENT
: Reflexing Knowledge, Power and Politics

ARUN G. MUKHOPADHYAY
arungm10@gmail.com
Independent Researcher
(Formerly of Indian Institute of Management Calcutta)
INDIA

*Revised Version of Authors Presentation at

AFRO-ASIAN PHILOSOPHY ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE 2010
University of Mumbai, Kalina Campus, India October 20-23 2010

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1699086

SYNBIOTICS, ANARCHY OF EXCEPTION AND

NECRODEVELOPMENT
: Reflexing Knowledge, Power and Politics

BIOPOWER TO SYNBIOPOWER
Emergence of Biology had been hailed by Foucault as the entry of life in
history. Classical political theory, based on sovereignty, contract, right and duty,
was contested by Foucault with biopower meant to discipline and control the
individuals and their bodies(Foucault 2003). Biopower refers to the combination
of strategies adopted by the state and various institutions and agencies to
constitute and govern the population by forms of specialized knowledge and self-

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1699086

governing participants. The Biopower in contemporary context comprise of

three elements knowledge of vital life processes, power relations that aims at
human and the modes of subjectification (Rabinnow and Rose 2006). The politics
of life itself shapes how biopower organizes proliferating discourses and thus
makes technologically mediated life contested politically. (Rutherford1999).
Twentieth century has ushered in an era of biorevolution.
Rediscovery of Mendelian heredity in 1900, Crick and Watsons publication on
structure of DNA in 1953 and completion of the first draft sequence of the
human genome in 2000 have provided human race with apparently landmark
scientific breakthroughs. Post genome biology has changed the focus of
proliferation problem from biological or chemical warfare agents as the object of
malign manipulation to the physiological target in the human body as the object
of attack.(Nixdorff 2005).
The treasure of genetic history and make up of population are
becoming an attractive research target for biomedical researchers and
pharmaceutical corporations. Sociologist Nikolas Rose, has reinterpreted Michel
Foucaults notion of biopolitics, as a new style of thought modeled on
genomics that emphasizes Information, individualized risks and individualized
variations. Bruce Braun, on the other hand, furthers Roses thinking to reflect on
novel implications of classical forms of biopolitics .Braun observes that what is
important in terms of an ethics of care of self in democracy may appear to
others as yet another expression of empire (Braun 2007). Global health has
always been economic opportunity and security-sensitive to United States. It has
also been observed to be the moral responsibility of the USA government to
address the global heath challenges. Public health preparedness transcends
surveillance, war against terrorism and political policy and would provide United
States with a much broader exposure to twenty-first century world. There is a
strong advocacy for vesting global health leadership in preparedness and health
diplomacy
to US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) (Novotny
2006).
Genetic engineering and subsequently, genomics had emerged early in
the United States, primarily because of state-patronage attuned to capitals
need. Following the pathway ,de novo synthesis is a new paradigm and a
powerful approach to create genomes of various sequences, architectures or
designs. Synthetic genomics refers to the laboratory synthesis and assembly of

genomes and their expression to produce cellular life forms whereas synthetic
biotechnology refers to the creation of programmable, self-referential, and
modular synthetic biological systems. Now for the first time, a genome made
entirely from chemically synthesized pieces has been successfully booted up in a
living cell at the J. Craig Venter Institute, USA in a culminating effort that has
stretched over the past decade (Gibson et.al. 2010).Thus Synbiotics, the total
spectrum of synthetic genomics and synbiotechnology could replace genetic
technology in a very cost-effective manner. Synthetic Genomics and allied
technologies have opened up immense possibilities for vaccines, drugs, hydrogen
fuel, etc. and parallel tensions for abuse or inadvertent disasters. The production
of synthetic chemicals through biologically mediated processes is increasingly
blurring the domains of chemical and biotechnology industries.

GOVERNMENTALITY AND THE ANARCHY OF EXCEPTION

The contemporary omnipresent state of emergency or of
exception as Agamben observes, is a modern institution, rooted in the French
revolution, developed during the First World War, and reached its zenith by the
mid-20th century as the paradigmatic form of government.
The legal
justification of the state of exception appears to be an ongoing imperative to
colonize life itself. Although the outcome of this encroachment is still uncertain
as Agamben reflects, it signals the slow disappearance of meaningful political
action (Humphreys 2006).
Thus contemporary researches to map the genome of different Microbes as
well as the human genomes will provide us with information about possibilities for
production of new threat agents. Production of such agents would be in violation
of existing disarmament treaties on biological and chemical weapons. A modified
mousepox virus that kills its victims by wiping out part of their immune system,
has been created accidentally by a group of Australian researchers (Jackson et.al.
2001).
In 1994, WHO(World Health Organization) Ad Hoc Committee on

orthopoxvirus infections had banned genetic engineering of variola, the insertion

of variola genes in other orthopoxviruses, and had required that variola DNA only
be provided to laboratories with WHO approval in tightly limited quantities. But
this protection will be very limited if synthesis of variola genes is carried out
elsewhere. Sandia National Laboratory, part of the US Department of Energy, has
initiated experiments with synthesized smallpox genes in order to produce
smallpox proteins for undisclosed purposes. Sandia National Lab. did not obtain
WHO approval for this research because the US government has taken the
position that WHA resolutions do not apply to synthetic, as opposed to genetically
engineered variola virus. If experiments with synthetic smallpox DNA continue to
take place beyond WHO control, then WHO will lose control of smallpox virus.
WHO draft small pox resolution, January 2007 totally prohibits any research
involving genetic engineering of the variola viruses. Sandia National Laboratory of
US Department of energy has asserted that WHA has no jurisdiction over
synthetic small-pox/variola viruses. Destroying the WHO-authorized collections
of smallpox virus in Russia and the United States would not eliminate the
potential risks associated with the de novo synthesis of the smallpox virus, or the
genetic engineering of an animal poxvirus to render it highly virulent in humans.
At the same time, destructionists have a valid point that continued research with
the smallpox virus at the United States CDC and Soviet Russias Vector would
entail safety and security risks and is likely to provoke growing political
controversy. In parallel and with the purpose of fixing a new date for virus
destruction, the World Health Organization is currently conducting a major
review of variola virus research for presentation to the Sixty-fourth World Health
Assembly in 2011. The two countries that retain variola virus do so not for any
defensible or essential public health reason. They do so out of exaggerated and
unsubstantiated security concerns and mutual suspicions between them.USA and
Soviet Russia, making dubious and sometimes cleverly disguised arguments
about their own interests and rivalries endangering the global sustainability. In
order to prepare for the 2010 major review of the smallpox research program,
the U.S. government has asked the Institute of Medicine to update its influential
1999 report on scientific requirements for the live smallpox virus. Committee in
its report on the Assessment of Future Scientific Needs for Live Variola Virus,2009
concluded that discovery research to gain greater understanding of human
physiology and immunology, while not essential, would require the use of the live
variola researchand research with variola proteins could lead to
discoveries with broader implications for human health.

Asilomar Conference, 1975 and most other such discussions did not
specifically consider the possibility of purposeful malicious applications of genetic
engineering which ultimately spawned serious environmental and health crises.
More crucially, the limitations of genetic theory and thus much the practices of
genetic engineering of crop plants or genetic screening for diseases are evident
from the 2007 findings of the US National Institutes of Healths Encyclopedia of
DNA Elements Project (ENCODE). This unacknowledged issue is a serious
problem of public information regarding the status of genetic theory and the
nature of the risks engendered in genomic research (Commoner 2009).In USA
industry providers such as Integrated DNA Technologies and Blue Heron
Biotechnology, which helped lead industry efforts to implement voluntary
screening methodologies in the absence of any specific government guidance,
are now eager to reduce those standards (Tucker and Perkins 2010). Ultimately
synthetic biology is going to be cheaper and easily accessible tools to build
bioweapons, virulent pathogens and artificial organisms.
The chemistry-biology interface is mediated through synthetic biology.
Obviously, chemical and biological weapons share a unique set of characteristics,
weaponization of disease being the common objective. The collapse in 2001 of
the Ad Hoc groups efforts to negotiate a legally binding verification protocol
reveals the inherent weakness of BWC.. Moreover, during a December 9 2009
speech to the annual meeting of states-parties to the Biological Weapons
Convention (BWC) in Geneva, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and
International Security Ellen O. Tauscher declared, The Obama administration will
not seek to revive negotiations on a verification protocol to the Convention. We
have carefully reviewed previous efforts to develop a verification protocol and
have determined that a legally binding protocol would not achieve meaningful
verification or greater security. The BWC is thus and unenforceable, and states
disagree about how to strengthen it. On the contrary, CWC regime is better
endowed and much stronger. CWC considers toxic chemicals and their precursors
as chemical weapons, except where intended for purposes not prohibited by CWC
and where types and quantities are consistent with the purpose. Toxic chemicals
through their chemical actions on life processes can cause temporary
incapacitation, permanent handicapped on even deaths humans and animals.
In such circumstances, it is critically sensible for CWC to cover
unequivocally all chemicals regardless of their origin and their method of
production and apply General Purpose Criterion to monitor toxins, bioregulators,

etc. and their biologically or synthetically produced analogues and components.

Thus effective review and oversight of dual-use life sciences research require a
mechanism insulated from powerful political interests. In addition, the oversight
process must be based on a common set of guidelines for identifying and
assessing dual-use experiments and results that could pose serious risks for
international health and security. The verification regime set out in CWC is the
most complex and ambitious in the history of multilateral disarmament. It has an
enforcement mechanism-the Organisation for Prevention of Chemical Weapons
(OPCW) which is clearly engaged in not only the public but also the private
sector. The OCPW can recommend sanctions against violators or can bring an
issue to the Security Council if more robust enforcement measures are needed..
Nevertheless, some major gaps in the verification regime threaten to undercut
the treatys ability to achieve its potential. Not only is the planned safety net full
of holes, but little is known about how the national authorities are discharging
their verification obligations.
CWC does not provide for the international
monitoring of compliance with a number of important treaty obligations. The CWC
will lack credibility as long as member countries have the scope to cheat on their
basic obligations with modest risk of being detected and held accountable (Tucker
2007).

DEVELOPMENT OF NECRODEVELOPMENT
In his classic paper Development of Underdevelopment
(1966),Andre Gunder Frank observes that that economic development and
underdevelopment are the product of the same historical process. The capitalist
expansion and development throughout the world simultaneously generate and
sustain both economic development and structural underdevelopment. The
notion of the development of underdevelopment within the framework of world
system opens the way to third-worldist ideology. In a subsequent
complementary work, Frank(Frank2001) elaborates on how the structure,
process and transformation of the "single world-wide system," generate the new
wealth and poverty of nations. The negative consequences of economic
expansion forge multiple social inequalities along with irreversible ecological
consequences. But the treadmill of production literature fails to notice the role of
the military and underestimates the environmental consequences posed by
militarism. For the treadmill of production, quest for profitability and market
share explains the hastening of the human impact on the environment. Arms

races and geopolitical competition drive the escalating environmental impact of

militarism. Of course,the centre of gravity or the source of strength
forcontemporary militaries is the industrial support base. The term treadmill of
destruction probes into the perilous legacy of military expansionary dynamics
that result in the creation and deposition of toxins in the environment.
Contemporary research and development on weaponry are purposely designed
to poison the environment manifesting the pervasive role of treadmill of
destruction.
The malign deployment of knowledge-power may be meant for justifying
the rule of the exception by pathologizing others as the bare life of homo
sacker. Human security threats to teeming millions of bare life in real world are
very much existential. Post-genome breakthroughs in life sciences have provided
the knowledge for systematic weaponization of pathogens and natural toxins.
Contemporary biowarfare is thus a deliberate public health threats which, along
with natural pandemics, have potential to endanger human livelihood at a
catastrophic scale transcending national borders. Thus Bio-power and necropolitics have been observed as two sides of the same coin (Mbembe 1997).
The series of experiments with human genome sequencing have connected the
creation, modification and improvement in disease-causing agents. The focus of
proliferation has shifted from biological agents as the object of malign
manipulation to the physiological target in the human body as the object of
attack.The US Food and Drug Administration has formally approved the heart
failure drug BiDil in 2005. BiDil is the first drug ever to be approved to treat heart
failure in `self-identified black patients'. BiDil's development apparently opens up
an evergreen pasture that exploits race to gain regulatory and commercial
advantage(Kahn 2008). But more crucial is its necropower to promote a
regeneticization of racial categories in society at large.Thus synthesizing ethnic
weapons may not be far behind.
Ynestra King (King 1997, cited in Charkiewiewicz 2009) had
characterized the end of 20th century as ...a massive renegotiation of power,
knowledge, and the ownership of life from the molecular to the planetary.
Fertility, labor, natural resources can all be rationalized and controlledall part
of the managed and manageable brave new worldnature, and the unruly
masses,., are monitored and managed as never before.Michael Hardt and
Antonio Negri in their masterpiece Empire(2000)observe that as capital has
become more abstract, fluid and globally mobile, defying time and space, human
life has become increasingly subjected to webs of information and technology.

The ideology of neoliberal market fundamentalism has forged a catastrophic

nexus of governments and corporations that leave no room for a no-war zone.
(Banerjee 2009). Achille Mbembe in his book On the Postcolony: On Private
Indirect Government (2001) stated, regarding the proposed accomplishment of
co-property between capital and power in the time of globalization, and taking
into account specific conditions of environmental exploitation and warfare in
Africa, that while war tactics in Africa are quite rudimentary, they still result in
human catastrophes. By necropower, Mbembe refers to a sovereign power that
is set up for maximum destruction of persons and the creation of deathscapes
that are unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected
to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living dead (Grzinic 2009).
German sociologist Ulrich Beck ( Beck 1995), notes that scientific and
technological breakthroughs have made societies capable to overcome many
dread diseases, but the Cold War powers had nurtured old diseases and even
developed new ones. Fear of natural diseases has lessened, but anxiety over
the power of the mighty and enigmatic have increased manifold. Biopower thus
is the power to rule over life, to take it at will, as it is no longer a productive
force but a destructive meeting of body and violence. Thus it is not surprising
that the rhetoric of development , civilization and social welfare has been
flourished since five centuries back, carry within itself the very explicit interest
of capital, which subjugates new territories and finally colonizes them(Grini
2008).

TRANSCENDENCE TO KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY

It is thus more crucial to communicate the intentions of the scientist and

to minimize various potential conflicts of interest. Thus self-governance of
synthetic biology would be more fatal when the autonomy of science has been
almost eroded by treadmills of production and destruction endangering life and
environment (Hooks and Smith 2005).In the absence of clear communication
about the rationale for synthetic genomics and synbiotechnology experiments,
the scientific community has to justify their public legitimacy which may be

grossly hampered by overestimating our current ability to control biological

processes at the organismal level(Cho and Relman 2010).
There is an opportunity for authentic interdisciplinary work to take
place that does not just follow the scientific research, but interacts with it. The
presence of a socially committed scientific community capable of transcending
the necropolitics of funding sources and to reflect and disseminate the
deploymentality behind sponsoring their Synbiotics researches is most crucial.
This is made more likely because social scientists are being involved in synthetic
biology at the upstream end, when the research is in its early stages. This
binary pathway of technology development is revolutionary in comparison to
traditional ELSI studies.Distinguishing between appraisal and commitment in
the context of social choice of technology, Andy Stirling (Stirling 2008) argues
for efforts both to understand and to affect progressive change. The social
scientists can explore the normative assumptions that lie behind the choices in
opening up of an emerging technology. Implicit assumptions perceived by the
social scientists may differ from those of scientists/technologists. This reciprocal
reflexivity is very much desirable to usher in a new set of expectations about
synthetic biology (Calvert and Martin 2009). The co-evolution of science and
society critically requires the synergy of contextualization, production of socially
robust knowledge and the construction of narratives of expertise usually in
conflicting and controversial forms. The desired reciprocity enhances how public
understands science and equally science understands the public appreciation of
scientific efforts. This enhanced mutual understanding enriched by a vision
accomplished by science re-thought. Inherent uncertainty about the future
state of knowledge engenders scientific potential. It is thus essential to explore
beyond the knowable context of application to the unknowable context of
implication (Nowotny et.al.2001). Janus Hansen (Hansen 2009) praises this
novel point of view as a stimulating perspective in legitimizing techno-scientific
innovation socially, but critiques that the diagnosis sustains some conceptual
deficits, which impedes the ability to highlight on cross-national variation in a
systematic manner.
Discourses naturalize the specific ways of thinking and normalizing
certain ways of doing things. Knowledge networks serve the interests of
contemporary hegemony and symptomatic of the war of position. But such a
coalition of networks can also strengthen anti-hegemonic projects(Stone 2003).
In On the Postcolony(2001), Mbembe calls for investigations on the genesis

and constructs of necropolitics to visualize an egalitarian world-view. Foucault

teaches that all problematizations are historical, contingent and structured by
power relations and that, therefore, the tools of genealogy can be useful as we
seek insight into the options put before us. Foucauldian wisdom reminds us that
the dominant configuration of knowledge and power is not inevitable and further
reflections can change it (McWhorter 2009). The politics of life, apart from a
question of governmentality and technologies, is also of meaning and values
(Fassin 2009). Thus if the values and political implications underlying the
debates on synbiotics do not ensure how to protect the society, we can refuse to
accept their imperatives and develop alternative epistemology and strategy. This
would be definitely a steady step towards radicalizing governmentality.

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