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Le biohacking est une vive critique contre les institutions scientifiques officielles et un appel à plus de liberté à travers notamment la constitution de laboratoires citoyens « indépendants », les biohackerspaces. Mon étude philosophique et anthropologique s’est basée essentiellement sur un laboratoire citoyen, la Myne à Lyon. Après une partie historique décrivant et analysant les influences épistémologiques dont s’inspire le biohacking, je me suis posé plusieurs questions : en quoi la pratique du bricolage technique et scientifique réalisée dans ces espaces, amène à construire de « nouvelles » normes et valeurs morales ? Comment se construit l’éthique collective au sein d’un espace tel que la Myne ? Comment les valeurs morales défendues sont opérationnalisées sur le terrain ? Comment s’articule la construction d’une éthique collective avec l’ensemble des éthiques individuelles au cours du temps ? L’objectif de ce travail, à travers l’analyse critique de ce mouvement, est de conduire à une réflexion plus large sur la participation citoyenne dans les choix technoscientifiques et sur les politiques de production scientifique et technique. / Biohacking provides sharp criticism against official scientific institutions and endorses a call for more freedom through the constitution of “independent” citizen laboratories, the so-called biohackerspaces. My dissertation, which has a philosophical and anthropological focus, is based essentially on the study of a citizen laboratory, la Myne in Lyon. After a historical part, dedicated to the description and analysis of the epistemological influences which inspire biohacking, I poses several questions: how does the practice of technical and scientific Do-It-Yourself in these spaces lead to the construction of “new” norms and moral values? How is collective ethics articulated in a space like la Myne? How do the moral values defended become operative with the set of an individual ethics throughout the time? The aim of this dissertation is to lead through a critical analysis of biohacking to a broader reflection on citizens’ participation in techno-scientific choices and on policies concerning scientific and technical production.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a philosophical basis for the biohacker movement. The paper discommends the dominating narrative of the movement, which portraits it as being exclusively motivated by scientific progress. In contrast, I argue that the biohacking phenomenon, besides scientific discoveries, has social, cultural and above all religious incentives. The hypothesis is that the concept of biohacking cannot be fully understood within the bounds of a modern scientific discourse.  The proposed narrative is put into practice via a comparison between the biohacking community and eighteenth-century mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. The comparison is established by this paper; Swedenborg is not recognized by biohackers at large. By associating Swedenborg with the phenomenon, I intend to present a tangible example that the questions raised by the biohackers outdates the scientific discoveries that is normally regarded as their primordial cause. By way of the parallel, the paper aims to highlight a structure of reasoning that would not be as protruding if the movement was to be examined on its own. The comparison centers around how Swedenborg and the biohacker community uses metaphors to depict new and presumably better ways of being human. Their usage of the figure puts the traditional Lakoffian understanding to question. With this paper I explore the possibility of the metaphor shaping not only their understanding of the world, but also their understanding of the human condition. By examining how the rhetorical device is used by both traditions respectively, I intend to bring to light how they dissolve the border between man and the concept of god.

In popular culture, the integration of mankind and technology is often a tale of experiments gone wrong. For a biohacker, however, “going wrong” is an integral part of the project to update the human body. This study takes aim at the subculture of biohacking through the lens of technology and gender. More specifically, the intersection of gender and class in masculinist and queer constructions of identity. Additionally the study examines the entanglement of risk, gender and the body in grinder practice. Transcripts from the internet forum biohack.me were downloaded and relevant parts were selected. Through discourse analysis, articulations were read in relation to gender, class and the corporeal. The reader is provided with an outline of a “grinder subject”. This is identified as the a product of an cyber culture built on an ideology of DIY and freedom of information. It presumes an essence of humanity, uninformed by gender and body politics, just waiting to be hacked. Masculinist constructions of such a discourse includes an underdog “man-of-action hero” as a rebellion against established elites, and a technological martyrdom. The study informs the reader on an ongoing identification process regarding the integration of body and technology, beyond traditional spaces such as the research hospital. The study confirms well-established feminist views on discourses about the body and technology as implicitly gender marked as masculine. Additionally, a reluctance to discuss politics of the body as well as a indifferent or negative view of queer voices in such a situation. A rebellion against institutionalised bio-power might theoretically blend well with a corporeal feminist critique on gender, but is instead trumped by fear of ridicule and ambitions of mainstream acceptance. However, the study observes a a glimmer of traditionally marginalised and queer folk speaking up about their experiences within a context of grinding. This also questions the notion that discussions of the body and technology assert a binary gender system. A feminist theoretical view on grinder practices requires a analysis of the body open to scrutiny, modification and harm. In discussing “aftercare”, a collective/individual management of risk emerges as a gendered cyborg concept, and the body as an essential agent in the grinder project. This is articulated through encouragement and concern when presented with failed grinder projects.This further supports the entangling of the body and the biohacker subject as a corporeal and gendered agent.

abstract: The biohacker movement is an important and modern form of activism. This study broadly examines how positive-activist-oriented biohackers emerge, organize, and respond to social crises. Despite growing public awareness, few studies have examined biohacking's influence on prevailing notions of organizing and medicine in-context. Therefore, this study examines biohacking in the context of the 2016 EpiPen price-gouging crisis, and explores how biohackers communicatively attempted to constitute counter-narratives and counter-logics about medical access and price through do-it-yourself (DIY) medical device alternatives. Discourse tracing and critical case study analysis are useful methodological frameworks for mapping the historical discursive and material logics that led to the EpiPen pricing crisis, including the medicalization of allergy, the advancement of drug-device combination technologies, and role of public health policy, and pharmaceutical marketing tactics. Findings suggest two new interpretations for how non-traditional forms of organizing facilitate new modes of resistance in times of institutional crisis. First, the study considers the concept of "pop-up maktivism" to conceptualize activism as a type of connective activity rather than collective organizing. Second, findings illustrate how activities such as participation and co-production can function as meaningful forms of institutional resistance within dominant discourses. This study proposes “mirrored materiality” to describe how biohackers deploy certain dominant logics to contest others. Lastly, implications for contributions to the conceptual frameworks of biopower, sociomateriality, and alternative organizing are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Communication 2019

In this master project I investigate materiality, transhumanism and alternative ways of producing knowledge and new discussions in the fields of glass craft, electronics and biotechnology. I make do-it-yourself glass computers and explore the relation between body/human-machine/computer with a hacker approach.

Användandet av bärbar teknologi förväntas öka och bli den största trenden inom träning ochhälsa. Klädesplagg, accessoarer och plåster används för att avslöja värden om allt frånhjärtfrekvens till sömnmönster till dietvanor. I takt med det ökande intresset för fysiologiskadata börjar även bärbar teknologi för kognitiva värden träda fram i form avkonsumenttillgängliga EEG-scanners. Aktörer som Muse, Neurosky och Emotiv ledermarknaden framåt och tillåter personer läsa av sina hjärnfrekvenser direkt hemifrån soffan.Syftet med studien är att undersöka intresse och förväntningar på kognitivt mätbar bärbarteknologi. Vidare är syftet även att utveckla en prototyp för att demonstrera hur en applikationtill denna typ av teknologi skulle kunna tänkas se ut, samt bidra till forskning ochmarknadsutveckling inom området. Studien är primärt utförd med en kvalitativ metod i form av en fokusgrupp, en semistrukturerad intervju och ett användbarhetstest, men visar även påkvantitativa inslag i form av ett enkätutskick där 139 anonyma respondenter deltog.Studiens slutsats pekar på ett intresse bland potentiella konsumenter för en mindre synlig bärbar teknologisk produkt med möjlighet att mäta värden som stressnivåer. Ett mindre intresse uttrycktes för delningsfunktioner och mätande av emotionella tillstånd. Produktens applikation förväntas vara lättförståelig och erbjuda både enklare och mer detaljerade data. De potentiella konsumenterna förväntar även att applikationen tydligt visualiserar vilka värden som mäts, samt att förbättringsförslag finns att tillgå. / The use of wearable devices is expected to increase and become the largest trend in fitness.Clothes, accessories and patches are used to reveal values ranging from heart rate to sleeppatterns to diet habits. In keeping with the growing interest in physiological data, portabletechnology for cognitive values are also emerging in the form of consumer-accessible EEGscanners. Actors like Muse, Neurosky and Emotiv are leading the market forward and allowspeople to read their brain frequencies directly from the couch in their home.The purpose of this study is to investigate the interest and expectations of cognitive measurable portable technology. Furthermore, the aim is also to develop a prototype to demonstrate how an application for this kind of technology could look, as well as contribute to research and market development in the area. The study was primarily done with a qualitative method in the form of a focus group, a semi-structured interview and a usability test, but also shows quantitative elements in the form of a poll where 139 anonymous respondents participated. The study's conclusion points to an interest among potential consumers for a less visible portable technological product with the ability to measure values such as stress levels. A lesser interest was expressed for sharing functions and measurement of emotional states. The product's application is expected to be easily understood and offers both simpler and more detailed data. Potential consumers also expect the application to clearly visualize which values are measured and that improvement proposals are available.

This dissertation examines how the human bodymind has been seen as malleable by science, technology, and policy practitioners from the Eugenic era in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, to the future imaginaries of Transhumanists and technology innovators. I critique the main goal of these practitioners – to perfect the human bodymind and through that perfection, perfecting human society – as utopic, impossible, and amoral. I argue instead, that we are intra-dependent – dependent on and through each other and our ecological contexts. I ground this argument both in the lived experience of those whose bodymind arrangements go against our normative expectations – folks like disabled people, queer and transgender people, body modders, and more – and in the philosophical metaphysics of Karen Barad's Agential Realism. I argue that we can only produce a future where bodymind alteration is acceptable if we first value different bodymind arrangements. I argue both that we cannot consider ourselves individuals, separate from the world or each other, and that multiplicity of bodyminds is a generative, heterotopic (neither utopic nor dystopic), force toward which we ought strive through engaging intentionally with each other in care relations. / Doctor of Philosophy / An interdisciplinary examination of how science and technology has made possible bodymind alteration from the eugenics in the early 20th century until today. Particular focus is given to how futures were imagined by different groups (eugenics educators, regenerative medicine scientists, and transhumanists in particular), the practices used to realize these futures, and the ethics around the practices and beliefs that are often taken for granted. I also describe several communities (disabled people, body modders, otherkin, and more) whose bodyminds are decidedly non-normative in order to reveal practices of community, kinship, and resistance to power that illuminate the lived realities of having a different morphology. I argue that these communities reveal ways to value and include morphological difference that might bring about a Morphological Freedom in which we might all thrive.

As technology advances with time, new devices are invented and old ones used in innovative ways. Microchips have been increasingly minimized to the point where they can now fit on a fingernail. When encased in a bio-friendly coating and equipped with the appropriate in- or output technology, new modes of natural digital interaction can be explored. This thesis studies how the general public perceives microchip implants as a digital interaction tool, as well as which features of microchip implants are important to them. Three different scenarios of implanted microchip use were created and used in eight semi-structured interviews. The results showed skepticism towards the technology due to worries about security and privacy, and a lack of knowledge of this technology. Benefits included keeping better track of health and making everyday actions easier, as well as excitement about this new technology.

Cette thèse se déploie dans un espace de discours et de pratiques revendicatrices, à l’inter- section des cultures amateures informatiques et biotechniques, euro-américaines contempo- raines. La problématique se dessinant dans ce croisement culturel examine des métaphores et analogies au coeur d’un traffic intense, au milieu de voies de commmunications imposantes, reliant les technologies informatiques et biotechniques comme lieux d’expression médiatique. L’examen retrace les lignes de force, les médiations expressives en ces lieux à travers leurs manifestations en tant que codes —à la fois informatiques et génétiques— et reconnaît les caractères analogiques d’expressivité des codes en tant que processus de convergence. Émergeant lentement, à partir des années 40 et 50, les visions convergentes des codes ont facilité l’entrée des ordinateurs personnels dans les marchés, ainsi que dans les garages de hackers, alors que des bricoleurs de l’informatique s’en réclamaient comme espace de liberté d’information —et surtout d’innovation. Plus de cinquante ans plus tard, l’analogie entre codes informatiques et génétiques sert de moteur aux revendications de liberté, informant cette fois les nouvelles applications de la biotechnologie de marché, ainsi que l’activité des biohackers, ces bricoleurs de garage en biologie synthétique. Les pratiques du biohacking sont ainsi comprises comme des individuations : des tentatives continues de résoudre des frictions, des tensions travaillant les revendications des cultures amateures informatiques et biotechniques. Une des manières de moduler ces tensions s’incarne dans un processus connu sous le nom de forking, entrevu ici comme l’expérience d’une bifurcation. Autrement dit, le forking est ici définit comme passage vers un seuil critique, déclinant la technologie et la biologie sur plusieurs modes. Le forking informe —c’est-à-dire permet et contraint— différentes vi- sions collectives de l’ouverture informationnelle. Le forking intervient aussi sur les plans des iii semio-matérialités et pouvoirs d’action investis dans les pratiques biotechniques et informa- tiques. Pris comme processus de co-constitution et de différentiation de l’action collective, les mouvements de bifurcation invitent les trois questions suivantes : 1) Comment le forking catalyse-t-il la solution des tensions participant aux revendications des pratiques du bioha- cking ? 2) Dans ce processus de solution, de quelles manières les revendications changent de phase, bifurquent et se transforment, parfois au point d’altérer radicalement ces pratiques ? 3) Quels nouveaux problèmes émergent de ces solutions ? L’effort de recherche a trouvé ces questions, ainsi que les plans correspondants d’action sémio-matérielle et collective, incarnées dans trois expériences ethnographiques réparties sur trois ans (2012-2015) : la première dans un laboratoire de biotechnologie communautaire new- yorkais, la seconde dans l’émergence d’un groupe de biotechnologie amateure à Montréal, et la troisième à Cork, en Irlande, au sein du premier accélérateur d’entreprises en biologie synthétique au monde. La logique de l’enquête n’est ni strictement inductive ou déductive, mais transductive. Elle emprunte à la philosophie de la communication et de l’information de Gilbert Simondon et découvre l’épistémologie en tant qu’acte de création opérant en milieux relationnels. L’heuristique transductive offre des rencontres inusitées entre les métaphores et les analogies des codes. Ces rencontres étonnantes ont aménagé l’expérience de la conver- gence des codes sous forme de jeux d’écritures. Elles se sont retrouvées dans la recherche ethnographique en tant que processus transductifs. / This dissertation examines creative practices and discourses intersecting computer and biotech cultures. It queries influential metaphors and analogies on both sides of the inter- section, and their positioning of biotech and information technologies as expression media. It follows mediations across their incarnations as codes, both computational and biological, and situates their analogical expressivity and programmability as a process of code conver- gence. Converging visions of technological freedom facilitated the entrance of computers in 1960’s Western hobbyist hacker circles, as well as in consumer markets. Almost fifty years later, the analogy drives claims to freedom of information —and freedom of innovation— from biohacker hobbyist groups to new biotech consumer markets. Such biohacking practices are understood as individuations: as ongoing attempts to resolve frictions, tensions working through claims to freedom and openness animating software and biotech cultures. Tensions get modulated in many ways. One of them, otherwise known as “forking,” refers here to a critical bifurcation allowing for differing iterations of biotechnical and computa- tional configurations. Forking informs —that is, simultaneously affords and constrains— differing collective visions of openness. Forking also operates on the materiality and agency invested in biotechnical and computational practices. Taken as a significant process of co- constitution and differentiation in collective action, bifurcation invites the following three questions: 1) How does forking solve tensions working through claims to biotech freedom? 2) In this solving process, how can claims bifurcate and transform to the point of radically altering biotech practices? 3) what new problems do these solutions call into existence? This research found these questions, and both scales of material action and agency, in- carnated in three extensive ethnographical journeys spanning three years (2012-2015): the first in a Brooklyn-based biotech community laboratory, the second in the early days of a biotech community group in Montreal, and the third in the world’s first synthetic biology startup accelerator in Cork, Ireland. The inquiry’s guiding empirical logic is neither solely deductive or inductive, but transductive. It borrows from Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of communication and information to experience epistemology as an act of analogical creation involving the radical, irreversible transformation of knower and known. Transductive heuris- tics offer unconvential encounters with practices, metaphors and analogies of code. In the end, transductive methods acknowledge code convergence as a metastable writing games, and ethnographical research itself as a transductive process.