The Supra-Cyborg
This essay offers a supra-individual perspective on biocitizenship. By developing the concept of the supra-cyborg, it envisions biocitizenship as the organization of humans within a supra-biological form of being, which is to say a form shaped by humans’ symbolizing capacities, but not wholly determined by them. Attending to our inhabitation within supra-cyborgs highlights the importance of the contest between corporations and governments and the rise of Global Governing Corporatocracies. The literalizing metaphor of the supra-cyborg also highlights as a key political question: whether it is possible for humans to live well outside of supra-cyborgs, and if not, what kind of supra-cyborg organization we should seek to synthetically engineer. This vision also re-calibrates a sense of which lines of action might be most promising for those who seek to implement either justice or care across human groups or greater space for nonhuman beings.