Biohacking: Changing Yourself, Reformatting Science

Abstract

Тoday the term «biohacking» is used in two main meanings. First, as a part of «garage science» movement, whose members experiment in home laboratories with self-created required equipment. Secondly, as the human enhancement practices aimed at improving the quality of life and the struggle for immortality. In the article, we show the integrity of these two seemingly unrelated aspects. For this purpose we use Fuller's post-truth concept, which allows us to analyze biohacking in the context of the more general processes of science democratization and the ongoing changes in the knowledge and power distribution system. The article refers to the conceptual metaphors of lions and foxes, which traditionally distinguish two types of elites. According to this division we consider biohackers as «fox strategists». Lion's conservatism implies status quo maintaining of order power/knowledge apportionment. The foxes try to change the order by questioning the «rules of the game». We demonstrate the joining of do-it-yourself ideology and «care of the self» principles by the case of biohackers interaction at the reddit.com forum, and its section dealing with transcranial direct current stimulation devices. The analysis of this case allows to identify biohackers strategies for academic science boundaries eroding, especially, science and non-science boundaries, individual scientific disciplines and «national sciences». Authors conclude that biohackers can be considered as philosophers of science. In this framework their practices of «personal science» and precedents creating represent the process of rethinking both the essence of science and its rules.