ABSTRACT
The value of Paul Rabinow’s concept of biosociality, I believe, lies in the way in which it functions, at the same time, with an absolute specifi city and with a productive indeterminacy. This indeterminacy has already been pointed to by the editors. One of the rationales for this volume, they suggest, is that biosociality is a term that is generative of so many different directions of empirical inquiry. It is a concept that serves less as a defi nition than as a provocation. It signifi es a problem space that is opened up for the human sciences by the biological sciences, where emergences in the latter place a whole range of philosophical, conceptual and methodological questions – concerning, for instance, questions of the social, of culture, of political economy, of ethics and of governance – at stake. And it is a provocation that has, for the most part, been taken up in particular ways – as indicated in this volume, oftentimes by looking at the ways in which social identity gets reconfi gured through new biomedical technologies.
