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Science as Culture
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The Postmortal Condition: From the Biomedical Deconstruction of Death to the Extension of Longevity
Cline Lafontaine
a a

University of Montral, Canada

Available online: 16 Nov 2009

To cite this article: Cline Lafontaine (2009): The Postmortal Condition: From the Biomedical Deconstruction of Death to the Extension of Longevity, Science as Culture, 18:3, 297-312 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09505430903123008

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Science as Culture Vol. 18, No. 3, 297 312, September 2009

The Postmortal Condition: From the Biomedical Deconstruction of Death to the Extension of Longevity
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CELINE LAFONTAINE
University of Montreal, Canada

ABSTRACT Deferring death, addressing its causes, altering its boundaries, controlling all of its parameters and understanding its process in order to prolong life as long as possible or even surpass the temporal limits of human existencesuch is the objective that the scientic and political authorities are pursuing so doggedly that health has become one of our societies major concerns. Starting with the biomedical deconstruction of death, this article will look at the new technoscientic representations of death and longevity. In the theoretical extension of the theses on biopower and bioeconomics, particular attention will be paid to the issue of the perfectibility and the reengineering of the body, as expressed in the life extension movement and in discourses accompanying biomedical advances. This permeates the theoretical debates surrounding genetic immortality, the development of regenerative medicine and of nanomedicine, articial prolongation of life and cryonics. Drawing a parallel between the status of older people and biomedical advances ght against ageing, this article will investigate the social and ethical consequences of this marked desire to conquer death scientically, to live without ageing and even to extend life indenitely. KEY WORDS : Death, ageing, biopower, life extension, biomedicine, technoscience, individualism

Introduction The endless health advice presented in the media and in public-health campaigns attests to the ever-increasing importance of biomedical science in our societies. Deferring death, addressing its causes, altering its boundaries, controlling all of its parameters and understanding its process in order to prolong life as long as possible or even surpass the temporal limits of human existencesuch is the objective that the scientic and political authorities are pursuing so doggedly that health has become one of our societies major concerns (Lafontaine, 2008). Inseparable from the medicalization process, the scientic deconstruction of death assumes that a calculation of risks and a mode of intervention to ght death are put in place (Bauman, 1992).1

Correspondence Address: Celine Lafontaine, Departement de sociologie, Universite de Montreal, C.P 6128, succursale Centre-Ville, Montreal H3C 3J7, Canada. Email: celine.lafontaine@umontreal.ca 0950-5431 Print/1470-1189 Online/09/030297-16 # 2009 Process Press DOI: 10.1080/09505430903123008

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The constantly increasing public burden of health-care costs is at the heart of the political and economic concerns of postmortal society. The unlimited extension of biopower that results from the right to health care places biomedical knowledge at the very core of social regulation. In other words, in view of the deconstruction of death, nothing nowadays is external to medicine (Foucault, 2001, p. 53; free translation). Viewed through the biomedical prism of pathology, even ageing looks like a disease. In a context of that sort, how can we perceive the limits of biomedical knowledge? What is the status of mortality in the directions currently being taken by biomedical research? As death becomes increasingly medical and biomedical devices become increasingly technical and perfected, the denition of death is seen as malleable and historically constructed (Lock, 2002, p. 11). Thus, without the resuscitation technologies that make it possible to reverse cardiopulmonary arrest, the very concept of cerebral death could not have emerged (Saint-Arnaud, 1996). Far from being an inevitable and irreversible phenomenon that formerly bore witness to the passing of time, death has become multiple and plural, subject to indenite extension (Carol, 2004, p. 128). Extracted from its symbolic and religious setting, death is now a complex biological process that can be broken down into a series of physiological stages connected either with an accident or with simple temporal use (Thomas, 1975, pp. 30 31). In his article Globalisation and the biopolitics of aging, sociologist Brett Neilson shows not only that ageing has become one of the major challenges faced by Western states but also that it is above all at the heart of contemporary biopolitics, aiming to control individuals and make them aware of their responsibilities for their own health (Neilson, 2003). As maintained by the largest international organizations, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the notion of an old-age crisis falls within the context of capitalist globalization, in which ageing is perceived both as a collective burden and as a risk for which individuals should be given personal responsibility. Thus, according to the logic of the commodication of health care, individuals must make a nancial investment in order to ensure their longevity. This thesis is echoed in the work of Melinda Cooper, which draws a connection between the World Banks prediction of an economic catastrophe caused by the ageing of the population and the massive investments in research intended to combat geriatric diseases (Cooper, 2006). The biomedical deconstruction of death (Bauman, 1992) and its demographic entrenchment in old age feeds many scientists and researchers fantasy of transcending the biological limitations of human existence, of indenitely extending life and even of reaching immortality on earth (Boia, 2006). This permeates extensionist debates of genetic immortality, the development of anti-age medicine and nanomedicine and the use of cryonics. Within the context of bioeconomics focused on the battle against ageing, this article will examine the new technoscientic representations of death and longevity (Waldby, 2002). Particular attention will be paid to the issue of the perfectibility and reengineering of the body, as expressed in the life extension movement and in the discourses accompanying biomedical advances. Like the myths and beliefs surrounding immortality, the technoscientic quest for postmortality (Lafontaine, 2008) must be understood in its overall socio-historical context, if we are to truly appreciate its scope. To conclude this introduction, let us clarify that from a socio-anthropological view point, the belief in sciences unlimited extension of human life is no more real and empirically founded than the resurrection of Christ or the attainment of Nirvana. Sociologist

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Norbert Elias was one of the rst to identify this interference between science and mythology. In considerations of immortality: The dream of the elixir of life or the fountain of youth is indeed quite ancient. But only in our times does it take a scientic form, or, in certain cases, a pseudo-scientic one. The knowledge of the inexorable nature of death is hidden by efforts made to push it away as far as possiblethanks to medicine, insurance policies and the hope that we could indeed succeed (Elias, [1982] 2002, p. 65; free translation). Continuing in this vein, this article will investigate the social and ethical consequences of this marked desire to scientically conquer death, to live without ageing and even to indenitely extend life. Deconstruction of Death By dening life as being the ensemble of functions that resist death (free translation), as early as 1800, French anatomist Xavier Bichat marked not only the Birth of the Clinic, as later subjected to detailed analysis by Michel Foucault, but also the naturalization of death and its integration into life (Foucault, [1963] 2005, p. 147). Before this, death was seen as an exterior force, a divine, mythological or accidental essence that descended upon an indi` vidual (Aries, 1977). Not only did the interiorization of death following this anatomical clinical denition historically lead to the privatization of death, it also gave a combative impulse to medical science.2 Thus, each new cause of mortality is motivation to nd a biomedical arsenal to ght death and extend life (for example, infectious diseases/ vaccinations, cancer/chemotherapy) (Bauman, 1992, pp. 138 139). Death and old age are thus treated like diseases; ills against which one must ght. Starting in the nineteenth century, medical science began to deconstruct death into a series of physiological stages, so much so in fact that the mortal process reaches above and beyond the limits of an individuals life. The cessation of function in one or more vital organs (functional death) is scientically differentiated from the death of the entire organic system (clinical death) or the death of cells of all the tissues that make up the organism (elementary death) (Fantini & Grmek, 2004, p. 1416). This distinction between an individuals death and the irreversible deterioration of his or her tissues opens the door to medical intervention to extend the process. As anthropologist LouisVincent Thomas explains: As a result, several stages can come in between life and total death (Thomas, 1975, pp. 30 31; free translation). This uctuation regards not only the identication of the nal moment, but also the place in the body where death is registered. Its place has changed across history, moving from the lungs (breath) to the heart to end in the brain (Carol, 2004). We only have to think of cardio-resuscitation, pneolators and organ transplants to grasp the current elasticity of the boundaries of death (Lock, 2002). The process of the biomedical deconstruction of death comes under a broad historic movement in which health and extended life expectancy have become central issues in Western democracies. Building on Foucaults theories of biopower, sociologist Nikolas Rose (2007) analyzes how, after the Second World War, public health and individual well-being overtook the grand modern political projects to henceforth become the primary collective horizon. Tightly connected with the genetic revolution, biopolitics is

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a new form of social control: each individual is called on to manage his or her life according to a constantly increasing number of risk factors and with the assistance of an extensive biomedical system made up of all kinds of experts. Assimilated into modern emancipation, this biocontrol corresponds to the technical capacity to intervene directly in individuals lives and to erase the lines between social and biological life in favour of an engineering of the living (Franklin, 2003, p. 105). Movements in support of extending life via the technosciences are part of this context. The Fight against Ageing By extending the biomedical deconstruction of death, this testing of the limits of human longevity gave rise in the early 1990s to a new scientic discipline: biogerontology. While geriatrics is focused on the study and treatment of age-related disease, this new discipline aims to understand and master the biological processes that characterize ageing (Mykytyn, 2006b). In an openly anti-age perspective, biogerontology rejects the generally admitted idea that senescence is a natural and inevitable phenomenon and that death is a biological necessity. Rather, it is based on the conviction that it is scientically possible to intervene in the ageing process to detect its effects or, in a yet more optimistic perspective, completely thwart them (Klatz, 2005). Concerned with the cellular and molecular processes of the body, biogerontology oscillates between two broad methods for scientically explaining age-related regression. The rst hypothesis argues that it is a phenomenon genetically programmed by evolution, while the second claims that it is an accidental effect of natural selection (Anton et al., 2005). In this second hypothesis, senescence would be a uke of evolution and would have no particular function from an evolutionary point of view (Caplan, 2004, p. 280). Ageing would simply be explained by natural selection, which favours reproduction and had no plan for the extension of organic life beyond it. This would explain why, under natural conditions, very few individuals reach or outlive the age of reproduction; this is true for most animal species, including humans. For bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan, this argument alone justies why we consider ageing to be a disease and not a natural phenomenon (Caplan, 2004, p. 280). From biogerontologys viewpoint, whether it is the result of genetic programming or the unforeseen consequence of the laws of evolution, ageing is a mortal calamity that science must combat (Mykytyn, 2006a). Founded in 1992 by a group of scientists and doctors, the American Academy of AntiAgeing Medicine (A4M) gives biogerontology institutional footing. Resembling more a social movement than a new scientic discipline, A4M proposes not only a different approach to ageing, but also, and most signicantly, to a new way of practising medicine. Deeply interested in the anti-ageing current of biomedicine that A4M represents, anthropologist Courtney Everts Mykytyn shows that its goal is to optimize health and prolong life indenitely (2006a, p. 644). With more than 11,000 members, this association aims to ght the symptoms of ageing, improve the physical performance of older people and increase longevity (Juengst, 2004). Other than the purely negative representation of old age that it conveysturning older people into consenting victimsthis movement is characterized by belligerence within the biomedical community. Accused of being charlatans lured by potential gains, A4M biogerontologists are the subject of lively debate (Binstock, 2003; see also Davis, 2004). Of course, they present themselves as the adventurers and conquerors of old age against a backdrop of the conservative and
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servile biomedical establishment (Mykytyn, 2006a, p. 651). Attacking both medical authorities and gerontologists who express concern about the ethical consequences of anti-age medicine, biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey afrms that we risk being responsible for the deaths of (count them) over 100,000 people each day that this technology is not developed if we delay that progress by failing to speak and act to bring it about (de Grey, 2004, p. 265). If we trust the predictions of Dr Ronald Klatz, a member of A4M, the avenues of antiage medicine are practically unlimited, since they will soon allow us to overcome the limitations of human longevity (currently established at around 120 years) to eventually reach theoretical immortality (2005, p. 541). Current research in the biomedical sector is indeed converging in anti-age medicine. Bringing about a major change of paradigm, regenerative medicine constitutes in some ways the scientic standard of this ght against ageing (Cooper, 2006). From Perfectibility to Overcoming the Limitation of the Human Species More than 200 years after its formulation, Condorcets dream that a time will come when death would result only from extraordinary accidents or the more and more gradual wearing out of vitality, and that, nally, the duration of the average interval between birth and wearing out has itself no specic limit whatsoever ([1795] 1988, p. 350; free translation) is more relevant than ever. The technoscientic desire to indenitely prolong life is based on a particular conception of human perfectibility. Whereas during the Enlightenment it underlay global social progress through reason, perfectibility (as dened by supporters of the anti-age struggle) is brought back to its strictly individual and biological aspect (Knorr Cetina, 2005). While the political ideal of the Enlightenment stemmed from a belief in the perfectibility of societybased in a desire to improve living conditions through collective actionpostmodern society is characterized by the belief in perfectibility itself. Thus, it is not society that must be changed, but rather the individual, who is essentially understood to be an informational being (Lafontaine, 2004). This passage from the perfectibility of society to the perfectibility of life itself corresponds with the depoliticization of society and the increase in a new genre of individualism founded on the belief in the superpower of science and its capacity to intervene in the vital process (Knorr Cetina, 2005). If we take seriously the philosophy generated by the concept of posthumanism or groups like the World Transhumanist Association, what must now be overcome are the obstacles imposed by the limitations of life itself. The desire to transcend the biological framework of the human species is, as sociologist Edgar Morin points out, at the very core of the life extension movement: Overcoming specic death also signies domesticating the species on all levels. To colonize the species is to colonize death itself: it is the triumph of individuality and its innite possibility. This is why scientic development perspectives show not only a tendency to progressively eat away at death, but also a tendency to revolutionize mankind in his very nature ([1951] 2002, p. 348; free translation). Sciences quest for immortality goes hand in hand with a desire to overcome an evolutionary framework in order to access the postmortal condition (Lafontaine, 2008). As such,

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regenerative medicine, nanomedicine and biogerontology conduct the biomedical deconstruction of death and ageing; they explicitly aim to optimize individual biological capacities in order to buffer the errors of nature (Mykytyn, 2006a, p. 644). In a society where only accidental death is natural (Morin, [1951] 2002, p. 321; free translation), the line between necessary care and performance-based medicine is difcult to drawall the more so because the ideal of perfectibility itself has no limit (Thacker, 2005, p. 295). Human/Machine Hybridization: An Avenue to Postmortality We have modied our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves in order to exist in this new environment (Wiener, [1954] 1988, p. 46). This statement alone from the founder of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener, summarizes the logic of adaptation and technoscientic perfectibility for which the defenders of life extension call. Formulated at the end of World War II, this imperative for self-transformation via the technical is anchored in an informational representation of the world in which the human species is a stage in an as yet unnished evolutionary process (Lafontaine, 2004). In an article titled The ontology of the enemy, science historian Peter Galison demonstrates the signicance of a military experiment as a dening moment in the elaboration of the cybernetic model (1994). In his article, he states that engineering an artillery system capable of following and identifying its target effectively is what inspired Wiener to develop a theoretical model in which the pilot is integrated as a part of a self-regulated machine. Based on the feedback notion, the analytical model he developed during this period stems, in fact, from a conceptual absence of differentiation between human and machine. The pilot represents an integral part of the technical device. In fact, the enemy pilot is the rst-ever cyborg model created and later becomes the icon of the cybernetic subject after the war. It is in that sense that Peter Galison uses the phrase ontology of the enemy (1994). The human/machine fusion which cybernetics implies takes on its full meaning only when replaced in the theoretical context of an informational paradigm in which information is primary data regardless of its source (be it physical, biological, technical or human). Theoretically perceived as a quantiable physical principle with which the efciency of a given system can be measured, information in the cybernetic model becomes a more fundamental concept than the notion of life itself, as it applies to living beings and machines alike (Lafontaine, 2004). This absence of conceptual distinction between living and non-living leads to the assimilation of death to the phenomenon of entropy. Without going into the historical details, let us emphasize that the introduction of cybernetic concepts into molecular biology, following the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA by Watson and Crik in 1953, gave rise to a new perception of living beings in terms of codes and genetic information (Kay, 2000). The processing and control of information seem like a way to postpone death. Indeed, behind the notions of code and a genetic programme hides the idea that it would be possible to decode the book of life in order to conquer and surpass the limits of death. Beyond biomedical advances, it is actually all of the technosciences that seem to be carried by the informational model, one of the main characteristics of which is the systematic devaluation of the human body. Called on to be improved and modied, before being physically relegated by the machine, the body is indeed seen as a sketch that can
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be entirely remodelled (Le Breton, 1999). The engineer and specialist in articial intelligence, Raymond Kurzweil, suggests a complete reprogramming of the human body in order to produce a Version 2.0 that is better adapted and performs better than the original biological version (2004, pp. 4 5). A member of the Immortality Institute, Kurzweil directly associates life extension with the complete biological modication of the species.3 In this perspective, technoscientic evolution replaces the inevitability of death. Dominant in life extensionist discourse, the conception of the body as an evolutionary weakness is clearly transparent in the Human Body Version 2.0 project. Considering the digestive system to be poorly adapted to the new technoscientic world, Kurzweil argues, for example, that: Today, this biological strategy [the digestive system] is extremely counterproductive. Our outdated metabolic programming underlies our contemporary epidemic of obesity and fuels pathological processes of degenerative disease such as coronary artery disease, and type II diabetes (2004, p. 103). In the eyes of this engineer, it is not just the digestive system that is obsolete, but the entire human organism. Faced with this evolutionary decrepitude of human nature, Kurzweil hopes for the beginning of post-biology or, in other words, an era in which the body will be overcome via biotechnologies, information technologies and articial intelligence. According to Kurzweil, the overcoming of the body through technosciences may take several forms: either a complete remodelling of the biological body through genetic engineering and nanotechnologies or the downloading of the contents of the brain to a computer. Informational Immortality In a book entitled The Religion of Technology, historian David F. Noble demonstrates how the belief in informational immortality is quite widespread in the elds of articial intelligence and the information technologies. For instance, like Kurzweil, the robotics specialist Hans Moravec believes that intelligent machines represent the next evolutionary stage: Minsky described the human brain as nothing more than a meat machine and regarded the body, that bloody mess of organic matter, as a teleoperator for the brain (. . .) The possibility of an utter separation of mind from the thinking person underlaid his belief in the possibility of a thinking machinemachine that manufacture thoughtsand view intelligence as something that could be achieved by any brain, machine, or other thing that has a mind (Noble, 1999, pp. 156 157). The transfer of the human mind to an articial medium would assure the transformation of Homo Sapiens into Machina Sapiensa supreme form of intelligence liberated from the torments of mortality. The idea that it would eventually be possible to download the contents of human intelligence to a machine in order to pursue post-biological existence is also very present in cyberculture circles. A sociologist connected with the National Science Foundation, William Sims Bainbridge (2004) goes so far as to afrm that the transfer of information from brain to computer will liberate the body, which is but a fragile and awed medium for our informational essence. Although it seems to come directly out of a science ction plot, the idea that it would eventually be possible to transfer the contents of a human being to an articial medium is clearly found in Norbert Wieners thought:

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In others words, the fact that we cannot telegraph the pattern of a man from one place to another seems to be due to technical difculties, and in particular, to the difculty of keeping an organism in being during such a radical reconstruction. The idea itself is highly plausible ([1954] 1988, p. 104). In 1990, the arguments of Walter Gilbert, the Nobel Prize winner for molecular biology, were in keeping with this idea when he declared that it would soon be possible to burn the contents of a human being onto CD and, thus, transport them in ones pocket (Kay, 2000, p. 5). Oscillating between an extreme materialism that founds subjectivity on the molecular level and an idealism that translates all reality into information, the contemporary technoscientic paradigm participates in a conceptual non-differentiation between human and machine, between nature and artice and between the living and the non-living (Lafontaine, 2004). This blurring of the lines has repercussions for the posthuman imagination in the belief in a subjective continuity between corporal and articial mediatherein lies the fantasy of downloadingbut also the project to improve the body, even make it amortal through the incorporation of molecular machines.4 Quoted by many researchers as the miracle solution to human weakness and death, nanotechnologies embody the technoscientic ideal of a world without mortality. Eric Gullichsens positions are in fact the very soul of the postmortal condition: The DNA is a molecular soul. The brain is a neurological soul. Electron storage creates the silicon soul. Nanotechnology makes possible the atomic soul (Gullichsen, 1994, p. 201). Carrier of all hopes, in the eyes of some, nanotechnologies are a clear avenue to postmortality.

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The Future without Limits via Nanotechnologies Produced by a technoscientic convergence of quantum physics, microelectronics, computer science and genetic engineering, nanotechnologies are characterized by the manipulation and recombination of matter on the atomic level. They are in some ways an umbrella term encompassing a set of technoscientic mutations (Schmidt, 2004). A research eld in which the results are still experimental, nanotechnologies leave room for researchers and futurologists speculations. Pairing living organisms and inert matter on the molecular level makes it possible, for example, to conceive of broadening the scope of the human body via electronic chips and nanorobots (Lafontaine, 2006). Indeed, the unequalled potentialities of nanotechnologies feed a futurists imagination, thus questioning the discursive boundaries between science and science ction (Colin, 2002; Lopez, 2004). In Eric Drexlers founding argumentation (1986), nanotechnologies seem to be able to accomplish practically all imaginable scientic exploits, including that of ghting old age and the possibility of overcoming death via molecular machines able to repair the cellular damage of ageing. Nanotechnologies participate in a twofold processnaturalizing the technical and articializing naturewhich leads not only to the idea that we could imitate nature by creating new materials, but also that it will be possible to improve it (Bensaude-Vincent, 2004). Transposed to the human being, this double logic causes us to see the improvement and modication of the body as a natural continuation of evolution. However, we must clarify that this reasoning is possible only because nature and life were already epistemologically redened as malleable and controllable molecular assemblages (Dupuy, 2002).

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Robert A. Freitas, nanomedicine researcher at the Foresight Institute, pursues this logic when he states: Most investigators think ageing is the result of a number of interrelated molecular processes and malfunctions in cells. Thus if nanomedicine can learn to reverse most cellular malfunctions, middle-aged and even elderly people should be able to regain most of their youthful health, strength and beauty, and to enjoy an almost indenite extension of life (Freitas, 2000; see also 2004). Persuaded that nanotechnologies will make it possible to reverse the ageing process on the molecular level, Freitas set up a research project with the goal of establishing a therapeutic dechronication process; in other words, cellular rejuvenation. Intended to treat weaknesses leading to natural death, dechronication would consist of rst ridding each cell of its accumulated toxins, then replacing any chromosomes showing genetic errors and nally repairing one by one the more serious damages to cellular structure (Freitas, 2000). Faced with such promises, the seniors who die each day by the thousands are the poor victims of a yet underdeveloped technological world late in declaring war on ageing (de Grey, 2004, p. 265). By blurring the lines between science and science ction, discussion around nanotechnologies is directly in keeping with the outlook of the life extension movement. Far from being restricted to a circle of marginal researchers and futurologists, the project to modify and improve the human being through nanotechnologies was the object of a research programme in 2002 led by the National Science Foundation. Entitled Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance, the NBIC programme [nano-bio-infocogno] prospectively presents the technoscientic advances that are imaginable thanks to the strength of a convergence of nanotechnology (Roco & Bainbridge, 2002). Among the many promises of the conquest of the innitely small, those that improve human performance and extend life play a central role. We must point out that one of the co-authors of the NSF programme is none other than sociologist William Sims Bainbridge, the very man who defended cyberimmortality via the transfer of human intelligence from biological to informational media (2004). Therefore, institutionally, life extensionist researchers are not marginalized; rather, they are generally well positioned on the political and economic chessboard of research. The speculative discourse to which they lend themselves provides a perfect framework for contemporary technological determinism. The issue of mastery and manipulation frequently found in the debate on nanotechnologies attests to the epistemological primacy bestowed upon technological applications (Mody, 2004, p. 7). Founded on a technological reductionism that tends to blur the lines between science and the technical, these issues participate in fact in a dual determinism. According to science historian Cyrus C. M. Mody (2004), there are indeed two types of determinist arguments in the discussions on the development of nanotechnologies. The rst argues an autonomous development of the technical, while the second presents technology as the major determinant in economic and social development. These types of determinism are found at the very basis of the life extension movement, which can be summarized as follows: the human body is inevitably called on to be transformed to adapt to its new technoscientic environment. The much-awaited technological revolution will be a salvation, since it carries the hope of an existence spared at long last from illness and death. While waiting for the massive investments in nanomedical research to bear fruit,

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well-off seniors of our underdeveloped era can nonetheless wait, patiently frozen, thanks to cryonics, for our scientic revolution to come to term (Lafontaine, 2008). Frozen Eternity An extreme manifestation of the biomedical deconstruction of death, cryonics is the most far-ung incarnation of the technoscientic imagination of postmortality (Lafontaine, 2008). Denitively crossing the line between science and science ction, those who promote this body conservation method drink at the same theoretical fountain as life extensionists. Thus, visionary nanotechnology engineer Eric Drexler (1986) sees cryonics as a practical solution for those who hope to take advantage of any future miracles provided by molecular machines. The directors of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, one of the largest human cryonics companies in the United States, point out the major role that nanotechnologies played in enhancing the credibility of their company: Alcor grew slowly in its early years, before the concept of nanotechnology helped to legitimize the possibility that future science could repair cell damage caused by freezing (Alcor Life Extension Foundation, 2007). If the prospective discourse around the development of nanotechnologies lent cryonics additional legitimacy, the idea of chemically freezing patients immediately after their death, to allow them to benet in the future from possible scientic advances, took root as long ago as 1964 when physics professor Robert C. W. Ettinger published a work entitled The Prospect of Immortality (2005). Founding his position on scientic knowledge acquired in cellular cryogenetics and changes in the biomedical denition of death, Ettinger argues that it may eventually be possible to bring back to life an individual who has been placed in cryonic suspension. In the context of the biomedical redenition of what constitutes death, he pushes to the limits the concept of the latter in terms of processes to afrm that the criteria for clinical death change according to the function of technoscientic developments. If a patient is placed in a state of biostasis (i.e. frozen), they could therefore hope to eventually regain health and pursue an indenite lifespan: Clinical death is often reversible; the criteria of biological death are constantly changing; and even cellular death is a matter of degree, since it is possible for an individual cell to be made nonfunctional by minor and eventually reparable damage (Ettinger, 2005, p. 3). Demonstrated by experiments on the human embryo during in vitro reproduction, the fact that we can suspend and restart vital processes on a cellular level makes up one of the main arguments cited to defend the scientic validity of cryonics. Technically speaking, the vitrication process (freezing the body below 120 degrees Celsius) avoids the formation of ice and irrevocable cellular deterioration. According to Alcor, any cell damage caused by this preservation method is entirely neutralized by nanotechnologies once the patient is unfrozen (Alcor Life Extension Foundation, 2007). The argument in favour of cryonics perfectly ts into the reasoning of the molecularization of culture as analyzed by Nikolas Rose (2007). In a radical manner, the defenders of cryonics simply extrapolate in an imaginary futuristic landscape the trends that are already present in the technoscientic world. Positioned in keeping with the biomedical deconstruction of death, the directors of Alcor argue that the future development of biomedical technologies will make it possible to shorten the time to resuscitate an individual in cardiac arrest without causing irreparable damage to the brain. Current scientic knowledge concerning the denition of death will then become obsolete (Alcor Life Extension,

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2007). This is one reason why the directors of the Cryonics Institutefounded in 1976 by Robert Ettingerinsist upon the fact that cryonics is not a method for conserving cadavers; rather, it is a treatment targeting patients whose cellular processes have not completely shut down (Cryonics Institute, 2002). Beyond being nancially prosperous, the members of the two primary cryonics companiesAlcor and the Cryonics Institutehave the sociological characteristics of belonging, for the most part, to the technoscientic community. One must simply consult the list of scientic committee members of these two organizations to realize to just what point they are rooted in the institutional and nancial milieu of university research.5 Thus, although it is a very marginal practice, cryonics participates in a wide-reaching technoscientic network and has a far from negligible inuence on the overall orientation of research. Quest for Voluntary Death Biomedical deconstruction, extension of life expectancy and the research to ght ageing have contributed to dissipating the inevitable horizon of death by seemingly wielding power over mortality. Philosopher Marina Maestrutti clearly describes this new attitude towards death: Practical worries about the risks threatening life cast aside the metaphysical worry of death as an inevitable conclusion to existence. Good personal hygiene therefore becomes a way of acting against the causes of death that give the impression of actively being able to put a contrasting action in place. A fundamental and unsolvable problem, death becomes a series of easily solved problems: care for ones body, physical tness, nutrition and general health are tasks that the individual takes on responsibly in a daily struggle against the end (2007, p. 176; free translation). Death is henceforth seen as an obliged passage that can nonetheless be controlled by biomedical parameters. Connected to this are the movements in favour of the right to dignied death through euthanasia and assisted suicide. The ever-increasing technicization of death leaves little room for patients and their loved ones who are entirely overcome by the biomedical complex (Lafontaine, 2008). The movement in support of voluntary death, which began as a response to the prolongation of life by medical means and to biomedical control, is based on a profound paradox, as the assertion of the subjects right to selfdetermination, in the cases of euthanasia and assisted suicide, stems entirely from technical and medical assistance. Thus the principle of autonomy, which is at the root of claims to the right to die, moves towards increased control and dependency of patients with respect to the biomedical authorities (Tierney, 1997). Alongside claims for the right to a dignied death, other movements that are very well organized, such as the World Transhumanist Association (2007a), openly militate for the right to live as long as possible thanks to unlimited use of biomedical technologies. The technoscientic promises of anti-age medicine, regenerative medicine, biotechnologies and nanotechnologies indeed give the illusion that it is possible to take action against death, so far as to make it disappear completely. It appears all the more plausible that a whole series of highly nanced research projects and organizations are taking action, and that, following the example of the more serious scientic institutions, prizes such as the Methuselah Mouse Prize are compensating advances in the eld.6

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As part of this reasoning, death becomes an option among others, including, in particular, that of turning to cryonics in the hope of one day coming back to life. Furthermore, recognizing the henceforth optional nature of death, transhumanists reject the very idea of deaths inevitability. Qualifying as deathists (religion of death) the opponents to the transformation of the human being for an indenite extension of longevity, transhumanists afrm that death should be voluntary and that it is simply an individual choice: The transhumanist position on the ethics of death is crystal clear: death should be voluntary. This means that everybody should be free to extend their lives and to arrange for cryonic suspension of their deanimated bodies. It also means that voluntary euthanasia, under conditions of informed consent, is a basic human right (World Transhumanist Association, 2007b). The claim for the right to technically prolong life by all means is emblematic of the postmortal condition.

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Postmortal Condition or the Denial of Age Whether the issue be economic productivity, the cost of health care or political conservatism, the ageing of the population appears in many socioeconomic studies as a factor contributing to stagnation and regression (Cooper, 2006). Inseparable from the biomedical deconstruction of death, the ght against ageing contributes to the isolation and devaluation of the elderly. Based on an analysis of the scientic representations of ageing, British sociologist John A. Vincent demonstrates the obvious use of war metaphors in the discourse of old age (2006, p. 688). If old age is a state against which one must ght, people who are suffering from it are not only excluded from society, they become an element of biopower via an increasingly far-reaching medicalization (Neilson, 2003). This is all the more true as the line between disease and ageing is blurred in medicine, so much so that ageing becomes pathology. Paradoxically, the ageing of the population is culturally accompanied by an overestimation of youth and a systematic devaluation of old age (Seale, 2005; Featherstone & Hepworth, 2005). As a true civilizational problem (Neilson, 2003; Cooper, 2006), the ght against ageing mobilizes an entire arsenal of professions and products, the purpose of which is to attenuate, even eradicate, the individual signs of the passage of time. The typology that John A. Vincent (2006) creates makes it possible to measure the scope of this phenomenon. The rst category is made up of products intended to camouage or compensate the effects of ageing, such as anti-wrinkle creams, vitamins, diets, exercise programmes or even drugs such as Viagra or growth hormones that are intended to reduce symptoms of ageing. The second category is curative medicine that today makes it possible to considerably extend life expectancy. Cancer treatments are the most convincing example of curative medicine. The third category consists of preventative science, which aims to counter the phenomenon of ageing on the cellular level, and includes genetics and genetic engineering or research on degenerative diseases such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons. The fourth and nal category is made up of those who openly call for the elimination of ageing altogether and the innite extension of individual life via the technosciences, such as regenerative medicine and nanomedicine. In the

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context of bioeconomics based on the ght against ageing, individuals become consumers called upon to make nancial investments in extending their own lives (Franklin, 2003). Conclusion In postmodern society, death has become a strictly individual affair and is dened as a right, even as a choice (Walter, 1994). Through the life extension movement, neoliberal individualism nds its most extreme form. Thus, according to philosopher Christine Overall, from an individualistic point of view, there is no valid reason to die to make room for a new generation (Overall, 2003). Strangely, however, the cultural, scientic and demographic pushing away of death and the idea that death can be actively fought have not attenuated the fear death inspiresin fact, quite the contrary. For bioethicist John K. Davis, one of the primary ethical consequences of the life extension movement is to have made the death of a 97-year-old all the more tragic, since it is a sign of the failed promise of amortality (Davis, 2004, p. 7). Without any other meaning than the end of an individual, death is still as, if not more, terrifying than ever. In other words, contemporary individualism participates in the desymbolizing of death. Death thus becomes socially insignicant (Lafontaine, 2008). Feeding the fantasy of innite longevity, the biomedical deconstruction of death and anti-age medicine threaten to shake even more fundamentally the anthropological reference points on which human existence and experience is based. For the life extension movement, life is seen as linear and extensible, a series of interchangeable moments and experiences on a timeline that can be broken down into identical units (Kass, 2003). However, human life does not in any way correspond with this ctive temporality; instead, life has a vital cycle that begins at birth and takes place through a series of stages that correspond to corporeal, subjective and social transformations. Death comes to end this cycle of individual life by symbolically opening the way for new generations. During this period, it is by taking stock and transmitting consciousness of the vital cycle that old age takes on its full meaning as the last stage before the ultimate passage (Kass, 2003). Additionally, the linear vision of a theoretical unlimited life leads not only to the devaluation of old age, but to meaninglessness. Avowedly adopting neoliberal perspectives (Copper, 2008), the current directions that biomedical research is taking raise important ethical questions, particularly with regard to access to technological innovations in the area of anti-ageing medicine. In this sense, bioethicist Daniel Callahan has raised the issue of a technoscientic logic based on a desire to extend life indenitely whilst the resources of the health-care system are limited (Callahan & Prager, 2008). The devaluing of old age, the desocialization of death, its loss of meaning and the feeling of absurdity that accompanies it are the negative sides of the postmortal condition. The latter appears to be the historic result of scientic deconstruction and the reduction of human perfectibility to its purely technical aspect. Notes
1

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The concept of the biomedical deconstruction of death harks back to the historical process through which medical science perceives death as a natural phenomenon that can be combated. Thus death is deconstructed into a series of causes and risk factors. According to this logic, ageing in itself is a disease that can be fought. This concept also harks back to the transformations of the bodily and biological boundaries of death

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(cerebral death) that followed the development of biomedical technology. Finally, the biomedical deconstruction of death corresponds to current research in molecular biology, genetic engineering and the eld of regenerative medicine that aims to extend human life indenitely. 2 The privatization of death corresponds to the historical process through which death, starting in the nineteenth century, became a private medical phenomenon. The hospitalization of the dying patient and his ` social isolation give a concrete example of this process (Aries, 1977). 3 The Immortality Institute is a non-prot organization the mission of which is to conquer the blight of involuntary death. It assembles researchers from various disciplines in the objective of scientically overcoming death. See the Institutes website at: http://www.imminst.org/ (accessed 23 October 2007). 4 The term amortality, created by sociologist Edgar Morin, refers to the possibility of extending the life of an individual indenitely through the use of technoscience. The individual remains mortal in theory, but he has the possibility of living a terrestrial life indenitely (Morin, [1951] 2002). 5 A summary examination of the websites of organizations dedicated to life extension, nanomedicine, transhumanism and cryonics shows that it is often the same individuals who sit on the scientic committees of many organizations with varying vocations. For example, Ralph C. Merkle, the director of the Foresight Institute, which is focused on the promotion and development of research in the nanotechnologies, is also the director of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Furthermore, he is also a member of several serious scientic associations, including the American Chemical Society. The same goes for Marvin Minsky, professor at the MIT Media Lab and member of the scientic committee at Alcor. 6 Created and managed by Aubrey de Grey and David Gobel, The Methuselah Mouse Prize is intended to compensate and accelerate research on life extension through experiments on mice. In 2006, this prize was worth 3.6 million dollars (Maestrutti, 2007, p. 185).

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