Marxist commodification frameworks fail to adequately explain the contradictions between life and IP law

Eva, phD candidate at the University of Sussex. “Intellectual Property and the Genetic Dispositif of Life: The Changing Role of Intellectual Property Law in Governing Participation and Knowledge in the Bioeconomy.” Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Sussex, May 2015. Pp 9-10. LJS

This thesis argues that these “paradoxes plaguing the intersection of the human body and intellectual property regimes in the present moment” (Waldby and Mitchell 2006, 136) cannot be explained through the prism of the “commodification” of life alone. Rather, analyses need to account for the emergence of a “new moral economy of R&D” (Lezaun and Montgomery 2015) and IP’s role within a “new somatic ethics” (N. Rose 2008a; 2007a), in which patients are incited to take active responsibility for their wellbeing. It argues that IP is becoming a central site that governs the increasing “problematization” of life (Foucault 1994, 114). Here, the predominant informational-genetic dispositif of life gives rise to intensifying tensions between the patenting of genetic sequences and emerging practices of self-governing on the basis of genetic knowledge. This thesis analyses the role of IP in confrontation with this shifting terrain of a politics of molecular life, and argues that it does more than provide commodities in the bioeconomy: IP governs participation and normalises knowledge, and thus acts as a “tactics” of government (Foucault 2000, 211), engaging “responsively” (Golder and Fitzpatrick 2009, 56) with challenges to these roles. IP’s relation to genetic conceptions of life thus goes beyond the “commodification” of life, and is better conceptualised as a confrontation with biopower, which can shed new light on the “paradoxes” at the intersection of genetic conceptions of life and IP law. The following chapters provide an in-depth analysis of IP’s contribution to the governing of life by managing tensions around truth discourses over life, the subject’s participation in the bioeconomy, and IP strategies for control over research agendas. This highlights two trajectories of challenges that are neglected in an overwhelming emphasis on commodification: the role of IP as a regime that excludes participation in the bioeconomy, and the role of IP in establishing control over a normalised version of knowledge over life.