Introduction

Summary

The Introduction explains how and why our contemporary context prompts the reinvention of life as conceptualized by Western metaphysics. It theorizes why biopolitical governance should be understood as the real subsumption of life by capital and argues for the importance of speculative fiction as a cultural mode that reflects upon and responds to how biotechnology is remaking life, conceptually and materially. The Introduction argues that we need a new dispositif of personhood that must necessarily be attentive to issues of colonialism and race. Taking up work by Sylvia Wynter, the chapter connects it to Foucault’s discussions of Homo economicus. It concludes by suggesting that the contemporary world can be characterized as a condition of epivitality, the prefix signifying “over, around, and outside of” and thus signaling the blurring of living beings with objectified things in biotechnology and practices of dehumanizing labor.