Il mito dell'immortalità nell'epoca del potere biotecnologico = The myth of immortality in the era of the biotechnological power

Abstract

Moving from a new reading of the myth of immortality told in the Homeric story dedicated to the goddess Eos and the human Tithonus, this article investigates the shift in the conception of human life, a phenomenon that has been so deeply marking the present. We consider here the arising of a social configuration more and more characterized in a biotechnological meaning and the predominant role that biomedical power has been playing therein. In this light the article highlights an epistemological change in the way the relation with the finitude of existence is interpreted. This shift refers to the process of economic valorisation of biological life and bioeconomic redefinition of contemporary neo-liberalist capitalism.