Temptation by Immortality: Commodifying and Resourcifying a Body

Article

Abstract

[In English]

The article deals with the idea of temptation by immortality as
promoted by new genetic discoveries and various products of postmodern culture. Postmodernity is considered as a recent stage in
the development of the capitalist system marked by a decisive turn
to the resources of human body and life processes. Peculiarities of
this stage of capitalism are explained with reference to insights of
Karl Marx and Martin Heidegger, which are summed up through
the concepts of commodification and resourcification designating
the main forces of capitalist expansion or genetic colonization.
Thus postmodernity is characterized not only by commodification
of culture, services, abilities and skills, but especially by the resourcification of genetic and life materials through the powerful
instrument of patenting. Genetic discourse is considered to be a new
worldview in which other discourses are correlating and supporting
the notion of an evolutionary trend from homo sapiens to techno
sapiens. This trend reveals new possibilities to transgress the limit
imposed on human beings by the forces of nature – mortality. The
author of this article arrives at a conclusion that, firstly, the temptation by immortality can be regarded as a version of modernist
ideology of human liberation from various social and heavenly constraints which is supported by scientific genetic discourse, becoming
a stimulating factor of postmodern cultural production. Secondly,
that all the possibilities stemming from new genetic and biotech discoveries fall under the regulation of property relations thus making
‘immortality’ – temptation and brand – both an exceptional commodity and a commodifying force.