First time with Foucault

Into the second term of my first year, and the module I'm teaching on is focusing now on contemporary theory. It's been enjoyable going back to basics on Foucault. I still remember the first time I was introduced to Foucault. It was probably the single most memorable moment of my studies as an undergraduate, and I hope to encourage my lot to recognise his valuable insights. Although it isn't core reading, I've requested that my groups look at the final chapter of the first volume of History of Sexuality and this week is shaped around biocapital, a recent rearticulation of specifically Foucauldian notions of the body as a site of regulation and (self)control.

This week, we'll be interrogating the various ways in which we are regulated and measured. In Britain, I often find myself driving down roads amazed at the amount of time spent regulating speeds, painting chevrons onto roads, installing crumpling roadsigns that won't kill us if we crash in them. Why are we forced to drive at 30mph in residential areas. Why do our governments want to keep us safe? Is it paranoia to assume there's a motive behind the seeming beneficence of highway maintenance? Does the government want to regulate our speeds to regulate our bodies? Why?

I wouldn't mind some fresh ideas about the ways in which our bodies are being regulated. I'll show these videos to illustrate the key point that regulation for foucault was specifically somatic. I hope that it will stimulate some discussion. With a few students from other countries, we might even get some international comparisons...

We'll move on to a discussion of biocapital after this, where I'll probably show another video and we'll discuss the ethical, political and economic tensions that might be at play in the contemporary bioeconomies.

PhD workshop: Bio-objects and their boundaries, Madrid 2012

Last week I attended the COST PhD Autumn School in Madrid. It was an intensive two day workshop looking at the methodology of bio-objectification that the COST group have been developing over the past year. We were given a chance to find tune the methodology tool kit and try to mould it to our work. After this, on wednesday, a few of us from the PhD group presented at the Bio-objects and Value Creation Conference. I co-chaired the panel which was a surreal and unnerving experience, but as a group we managed to produce fairly cogent answers to the questions fielded.

After the workshop, I feel a greater sense of clarity about my own research project. I am only seven weeks into my doctoral research, but through having to put together a presentation for the rest of the attendees, I was made to reflect upon what I consider to be the primary issues at hand within the arena of umbilical cord blood banking. Producing the presentation was the first time since I began my studies that I have allowed myself extended reflective time and moved away from reading the literature around my subject. It facilitated a truly productive discussion amongst the members that really allowed me to think in depth about the methodological approach I want to undertake in my research.

Like all stem cells, those derived from cord blood undergo a physical differentiation into specialized cells once transplanted into patients’ bodies. These changes in cells as they take somatic root are met with various tensions that are considerably more abstract. The host of social cogitations that surround cord blood (its donation, banking, shipping and transplant) are key, but cannot be captured and observed so readily. I feel that a week of discussion about the processes of bio-objectification and bio-identification have really helped me to begin developing a comprehensive understanding of the complex array of connections between cord blood stem cell units, those who donate and receive them, and all those stakeholders in-between.

Visiting a public blood bank and smaller cord blood unit collection was an illuminating experience. It was a chance for me to see matter out of place in so many ways. Cord blood fractionated, stem cells isolated and frozen; units transferred into containers and couriered world-wide for therapeutic treatment. The visit has given me ideas as to how I might approach empirical research. Laboratory observation could be a brilliant medium through which to witness the physical bio-objectification process, to witness this matter as it moves in and out of place.

Visiting a public blood bank and smaller cord blood unit collection was an illuminating experience. It was a chance for me to see matter out of place in so many ways. Cord blood fractionated, stem cells isolated and frozen; units transferred into containers and couriered world-wide for therapeutic treatment. The visit has given me ideas as to how I might approach empirical research. Laboratory observation could be a brilliant medium through which to witness the physical bio-objectification process, to witness this matter as it moves in and out of place.

Red blood cells being filtered before storage.