Temporada 1 · Rizomas en Combustión · JVV-T1-07

Anthropotechnics: when Foucault crosses CRISPR

I First cut: from the “docile body” to the “rewritten body”

Michel Foucault described biopower as the great machinery that domesticates life: hospitals, barracks, schools that carve obedient bodies.
Fifty years later, domestication drops the disciplinary scalpel and takes up the molecular laser-edit: CRISPR-Cas Φ, Prime Editing 3.0, base editing of picometric precision.
It is no longer only about regulating conduct; what is modulated is the line of biological code. Foucault's thesis —“make live and let die”— updates to “select what will be born and what will mutate”.

II The anthropotechnical toolbox

CRISPR everywhere
Clinics in Singapore offer in utero correction of β-thalassaemia; Boston consortia print CAR-T lymphocytes “à la carte”.
Bio-foundries
Full-stack factories where robots assemble DNA like Lego and validate the phenotype in zebrafish larvae — 48 h turnaround.
Dopaminergic interfaces
Dopaminergic chips that calibrate mood through optogenetics; pilots running in South Korea's anti-suicide brigades.
Somatic digital twins
Cellular twins modelled with AI: they predict toxicity and optimise anabolic cycles. The body lives, its replica speeds the errors up in the cloud.

Together they make up anthropotechnics: the art of designing the human being with industrial precision.

III The crossing with Foucault under neon light

From biopower to genopower
— Before: statistics, censuses, quarantines.
— Now: variant calling, polygenic panels, risk scores. Power does not only watch life: it compiles it.
“Docile bodies” ⇢ “editable bodies”
Obedience is no longer imposed, it is incorporated: tuned dopamine, muscles free of myostatin, corneas with a HUD.
Molecular sovereignty
Who signs off the merge into your genome? Governments, insurers, biomedical DAOs… or biohacker pirates.

IV CRISPR geopolitics 2025

China regulates after the He Jiankui scandal, but funds “out-of-womb” embryos in Hong Kong subsidiaries.
The USA approves a haemophilia therapy at 3.5 M USD; Medicaid negotiates discounts if the patient survives 10 years.
LatAm: Uruguay and Colombia compete in somatic-editing tourism with no FDA; Brazil launches a genomic sandbox in Manaus.
Europe: cautious primacy; Parliament debates a “Germline Integrity Regulation” that will clash with the free movement of patients.

The result: a fast lane for elites, a slow one for the masses. The risk of a molecular apartheid has stopped being a metaphor.

V Manual of bio-sovereign survival

01

Demand auditability
Any CRISPR clinic must hand over the hash of the sequences and the editing logs on a public blockchain.
02

Push for a copyleft licence on repaired genes
If your fixed mutation saves others, the protocol cannot stay in a private trust.
03

Foster community biobanks
Donate data under collective sovereignty; revoke access if the company drifts towards eugenics for profit.
04

Teach bio-literacy
Knowing your SNPs is worth as much as your social security number. “Genome reading” workshops in secondary schools.

VI Paradoxes and short circuits

Lethal efficiency — Eradicating recessive diseases could, unchecked, erase adaptive genetic diversity.
Lithium hunger — Neural implants scale up battery demand, displacing communities in Salta and Sonora.
Bio-spam — Startups promise “violet eyes” or “muscle with no gym”; if it fails, the glitched gene stays as living malware .
Geo-dumping — Patients refused in the West try reckless edits in border clinics: genomic allergies, lightning neoplasms.

VII Coda: editing or extinction

“There is no way back to the genetic Eden; only successive versions of human firmware.”

Anthropotechnics accelerates, with or without consensus. The Foucauldian dilemma mutates: governing life now means signing commits to its repository.
James senses a way out: bio-cooperatives that distribute the power as well as the risk. Accelerate, yes, but with power diffusers so the CRISPR scissors do not become an aristocratic club.

The future will live in patched bodies. What is left is to decide who holds the editor and under what licence we publish the species.