The moral economy of biotechnical facility

Abstract

Early programmatic statements about the future of synthetic biology primed the figure of the transformed biologist and the invention of facilities through which that transformation could be actualized. Ten years on from those manifestos, it seems worth posing the question of what facilities have actually been put into play as part of the making of the synthetic biologist, and how these subjectivational spaces – material, digital, and conceptual – are inflecting the economies of life, labor, and power within which synthetic biology continues to be imagined and elaborated.

Keywords:

• facility
• ontology
• ethics
• living foundries
• computer-aided design (CAD)

Notes on contributor

Gaymon Bennett is a professor of religion, science, and technology at Arizona State University. He directs a Sloan Foundation-funded project on synthetic biology and religion, and was a founding developer of the Human Practices experiment in synthetic biology. He is the author of Technicians of Human Dignity (Fordham, forthcoming 2015); and co-author of Designing Human Practices (Chicago, 2011).