Hegemonic contingencies: neoliberalized technoscience and neorationality

The chapter elaborates on two different, but to some extent complementary, theoretical insights – Foucauldian governmentality and Marxian dialectical materialism, with special reference to hegemony theory – to shed light on what we depict as the specific rationality of government which underlies the reciprocal constitution of neoliberalism and technoscience. It argues, more precisely, that the hegemonic status of the former draws significantly on this rationality, as enacted in and by the latter. This novel form of rationality stems from the intensification of contrasting traits of the modern cultural heritage, turning out to be hyper-modernist and post-modernist at the same time. This ‘neorationality’, by which a strong human agency is complemented by a full pliancy of nature, translates a mutually constitutive interaction, as described in much STS literature, into a matter of appropriative control. At the same time, the oscillation of neoliberal discourses between description and prescription makes it particularly difficult to develop a critique. Technoscience is profoundly traversed by this logic, leading to a peculiar way of conceiving and handling contingency and instability. Biotechnology regulation and practices offer a paradigmatic example of the simultaneous neoliberal remoulding of nature, people and politics. Moreover, this very sector shows how the development of governmental devices grounded on ‘ethics’ and ‘dialogue’ acts as a major trigger for the neoliberalization of technoscience. The chapter concludes with reconsideration of the question of ‘resistance’ in the light of the peculiarly hegemonic character of neoliberal rationality.