Josef Barla
In my interdisciplinary research, I investigate how, against the backdrop of today's multiple planetary crises, questions of technology, ecology, politics, and methodology are affecting the ways of living and dying well in the present and future.
Necrovalue and the Economization of Death Itself
Mosquito-borne diseases such as the Zika virus and malaria are increasing dramatically word wide. As traditional methods of vector control prove to be little effective and often harmful to local ecosystems, new approaches are sought for tackling this public health crisis. Amongst the most promising ones are genetic strategies which use the mosquitoes' own biology and reproductive capabilities against themselves. These approaches not only turn the mosquitoes into a public health tool but also promise the large-scale eradication of mosquito-borne disease. Starting from the hypothesis that rather than only commodifying the vital processes of 'life itself' (Franklin; Rose), death and eradication is inscribed into the mosquitoes' genetic code in order to ensure public health, the aim of my research is twofold: First, I explore the role of expectations as future-making practices in the bioeconomy of transgenic mosquitoes through which not only 'speculative value' (Sunder Rajan) is generated but also particular futures made present at the exclusion of others. Second, I argue that these novel genetic strategies mark a broader shift in molecular genetics from the production of 'biovalue' (Waldby) to what I will call 'necrovalue'—that is, the technoscientific mobilization and economization of death itself as that which entails value.
I am Principal Investigator of the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung für die Förderung der Wissenschaften funded research project "Ensuring public health through mobilizing death: Expectations as future-making practices in the bioeconomy of transgenic mosquitoes" (Az. 20.21.0.010SO; 10/2021-09/2023)
Race and Technology
This strand of my research explores the relationship between race and technology. Drawing on feminist new materialisms and Black posthumanisms, I argue that it is neither exteriority nor connectivity that characterizes the relationship between technology and bodies, but relational indeterminacy, which is resolved through agential cuts, or material-discursive practices that 'cut together-apart' (Barad). Building on theses insights, I explore technologies as practices in the context of the materialization of marked bodies. Challenging the epistemic and material terms under which bodies are considered either as inert or as fluid matter—including the accompanying racist discourses of biological inferiority and ontological plasticity—this research argues that calls to program racial bias out of technologies are not enough, for they remain caught up in the idea of neutral technology and the possibility of objective measurements as practices of mapping pre-existing (marked) bodies.
"Bodies-in-Technology and the Haunting Climate of Materializations" | Keynote lecture | Future Bodies From a Recent Past—Sculpture, Technology, and the Body Since the 1950 symposium at Brandhorst Museum Munich | 21-23 January 2021
"Diffracting AI and Robotics symposium" | Goethe University Frankfurt | 11-12 Oct 2019
New Materialist Methodologies
Growing out of my involvement in the COST Action 'New Materialism', this strand of my research explores the potentials of new materialist methods for investigations into the relationship between epistemology, objectivity, and research ethics. I am particularly interested in the role 'diffraction' (Haraway, Barad, van der Tuin) plays in reworking the relationship between the objects of observation and the agencies of observation, and subsequently in reshaping the question of the referent of objectivity. Building on these insights, I propose the notion of the researcher as transducer in order to arrive at an understanding of the researcher as themselves materializing in intra-action with other human and more-than-human forces and practices, shifting our attention not only to the performative power of research as a material practice but also to the constitutive nature of knowledge-making practices, along with their ethical and political implications. Furthermore, this strand of my research draws on the concept of the apparatus of bodily production in the work of Donna Haraway and Karen Barad and develops it into a speculative tool for the taking into account of the regulatory practices through which bodies materialize in their entanglements with technologies, putting forward an understanding of the relationship between the body and technology as a relation of ontological indeterminacy.
The Techno-Apparatus of Bodily Production: A New Materialist Theory of Technology and the Body (transcript, 2019)
From 2016 through 2018, I was Co-Chair of the COST - European Cooperation in Science and Technology Action IS1307 New Materialism: Networking European Scholarship on 'How Matter Comes to Matter' (PI Prof. Iris van der Tuin, Utrecht University) working group "New Materialisms on the Crossroads of the Natural and Human Sciences"