The ethico-aesthetics of life: Guattari and the problem of bioethics

The work of Deleuze and Guattari has inspired social scientists for some decades, yet it is only of late that Guattari's sole-authored work has emerged as a unique force in its own right. This paper explores what Guattari's work has to offer to the analysis of the problematic of 'life' and, more specifically, to the idea of bioethics. While much of the critical discourse on biopower in recent years has worked from the perspective of reflecting on the truth claims of the life sciences, Guattari's schematisation of 'assemblages of enunciation' in Chaosmosis offers an opening to the more ethicoaesthetic potentials of this thing we call life. I argue that the discourse of bioethics can begin to work productively once it is taken outside the scientific paradigm to which it currently remains bound. Rather than seeking to reflect on its object-life-bioethical thinking might aspire to become more experimental as a mode of thinking more sensitive to life's creative evolution.