ABSTRACT
Chapter 8 discusses the notion of metacodes. As noted in previous chapters, this concept refers to the question of new forces shaping the reality of our bio-infused present and the forces we as anthropos are entering into relationship with. We suggest that these forces form new epistemic underpinnings that at once present a new challenge for understanding our reality and give new tools for critique and social change. Finally, they constitute fragments of an experimental theoretical discourse, a way of testing how well new politics, forms of living, and ways of governing work together. We summarise how our work fits within the wider academic context of popular theories today that have addressed the rise of the bio-economy, biocapital, and bioproperty (e.g., Sunder Rajan 2006; Thacker 2005; Cooper 2008). Our argument, woven throughout the book, is that these do not fully account for what is happening to life today. We need to return to ‘dead theories’ (e.g., ideas of Rousseau, Hobbes, and Marx) out of which social science emerged to go beyond critique and thereby imagine a future that is grounded in the diversity of politics of nature as unfolding today, alongside an understanding of how the forces we are entering into relationship with are not so new after all.
