What is Pharmakofiction?

- Abstract | Georg Dickmann

From Leif Randts collective drugs in Planet Magnon (2015), Neill Blomkamps dystopian
phantasmagoria on viral infections and immune responses in District 9 (2009) to Dietmar
Daths transgenic microorganisms in The Abolition of Species (2008), contemporary science
fiction is seething with genetically modified materials, barely visible, non-human agents and
poisonous, precarious substances. We are constantly made aware that the pharmakeia in
contemporary science fiction are not marginal, but minoritarian. They occupy a strategically
important place and help to generate the fantastic worlds and subjects in which they circulate.
They infect and control both singular and collective bodies and, in doing so, inevitably set the
stage for far-reaching bio-political and, more important, pharmaco-political questions: How do
potent and non-potent substances govern todays bodies? How are poisons and remedies
being used? What are their effects and side-effects that in turn constitute or devastate the
world? What forces and opposing become mobilized?

The presentations launching pad is the inference that our bio-technological circumstances are
reflected or impregnated in these and many other fictions of the future. Contemporary science
fiction describes trans or even post-human bodies that no longer function as self-contained
and fixed entities, but instead as sensitive and flexible codes with permeable borders, able to
be programmed and reprogrammed through biotechnology and moreover pharmacology, and to
which we can prescribe value.

As a result, literary, filmic and artistic expression takes on both a symptomatic as well as a
diagnostic quality. As part of the social sphere that is to say, as that, which Castoriadis
classifies as the collective imaginary , the aesthetic expression of this collective imaginary
is not only representative, but can only be dealt with or rendered discursive through artistic
means and anticipated or conceptualized with in the light of a still unknown future.

In this sense, the lecture attempts to trace two perspectives inherent to pharmakos. The
first perspective touches on the topoi of the bio-political. Particularly in light of Foucault, the
question then arises as to how the governance of life is organized, produced and lead by
precarious substances. The second perspective has a bearing on the field of fiction,
imagination, and aesthetic practice. It asks how we respond to the bio-technological
developments of the present and to the ensuing power effect through a different, poetic
practice, that like an aesthetic anti-laboratory can serve to create matter and bodies. In the
works of Paul B. Preciado the Spanish philosopher and queer-theorist who connects
pharmaco-political analysis with the practices of intoxicating himself with testosterone for one
year , these two perspectives become interwoven.

Georg Dickmann ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am DfG-Graduiertenkolleg Das Wissen der Knste
an der Universitt der Knste Berlin und promoviert dort mit einer Arbeit zu Pharmakologien der
Science Fiction. Wissen und Politik prekrer Substanzen. Georg Dickmann hat davor 2007 bis 2014
Deutsche Philologie und Philosophie in Dsseldorf und Berlin studiert. Neben seiner wissenschaftlichen
Ttigkeit arbeitet er als freier Journalist. Ferner ist Georg Dickmann Mitbegrnder von diffrakt. Zentrum
fr theoretische Peripherie, wo er seit Mrz 2017 als Theoriekurator ttig ist.

Georg Dickmann is a research fellow in the post-graduate program The Science of the Arts at the
University of the Arts (Universitt der Knste) Berlin and received his doctorate there with his thesis,
titled Pharmacologies of Science Fiction. The knowledge and politics surrounding precarious
substances. Georg Dickmann had previously studied German Philology and Philosophy in Dusseldorf and
Berlin from 2007 to 2014. In addition to his scientific work, he also works as a freelance journalist.
Additionally, Georg Dickmann is a co-founder of diffrakt. Centre for Theoretic Periphery, where he
works as a theory curator.

PHARMA EIN
KOS/N: APPARAT