The plastic body as an epistemological figure of biotechnological utopia
The plastic body as an epistemological figure of biotechnological utopia

Summary/Abstract: Underlying the scientific statements about the possibility of transformation of the human condition lies the rejection of the belief in the perfection of the human existence and the acceptance of beliefs about its biological incompleteness and imperfection, which is a cause of disease, old age, and finally, human mortality. This leads to the acceptance of such understanding of the human condition, where whatever pertains to the flesh is conceived of as an accidental feature. In the utopian view of biotechnology, the body can be redeemed from bodily deficits, weaknesses, flaws and limitations. The biological nature of man becomes the subject of biotechnological transformation thanks to technologies optimizing the properties of the body, or becomes a technological artefact substituting the body. This perspective entails a belief in the non–restrictive and unlimited plasticity of the body, which is defined by the equivalence and susceptibility to transformation optimizing its properties. A medical biotechnology project aims to reconstruct the human body, which, thanks to this particular technology, and under its influence, becomes more and more plastic. On the scientific and medical basis the biotechnological utopia is born; it is understood as a design of a perfect, imperishable body, and a body capable of regeneration and self–healing. It raises fundamental questions about human individual identity and its identity as a species.

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