Alexander Friedrich

In my research project, I study modern cooling technologies as a means of biopower. Mechanical chilling and freezing not only contribute to preserving and reproducing organic entities but also help to save, to improve, and to dispose of life. With the social implementation of artificial coldness in the late 19th century, the continuing development of cold chains to complex cooling networks, and the recent formation of the cryobank industry, a socio-technical formation emerged that I call the cryogenic culture. My study focuses on refrigeration-driven biotechnology – encompassing food production as well as assisted reproductive technology – as a fundamental apparatus (dispositif) of the cryogenic culture.

One of the crucial steps in the history of the cryogenic culture was the development of the cold chain that enabled modern societies to provide fresh food from all over the world, allowed urbanized areas to grow rapidly, and prompted urbanized people to change their consumption patterns and eating habits drastically, since food supply no longer depends on local seasonal, climatic, and agricultural constraints. Instead, modern life fundamentally depends on refrigeration now. This is true both in a broad socio-technical and a strictly bio-technical sense:

Socio-technically, modern life heavily relies on cooling systems which maintain facilities of energy supply, mobility, telecommunication, food supply, and accommodation. Thereby, the reliability of these systems has become a conditio sine qua non for the organization of modern societies. Malfunctions of such cooling systems can cause serious trouble, ranging from the disturbance or interruption of communication and transportation infrastructures to large-scale spoilage of food or even a nuclear meltdown.

In a bio-technical sense, nearly every aspect of life in modern societies is affected by refrigeration techniques: we cool environments, bodies, food, drugs, organs, tissue, semen, eggs, blood, proteins, and much more. The thermo-dynamical preservation of biological substances allows not only storing organic entities; it opens up quite new possibilities of producing, distributing, maintaining, and disposing of life as a resource – that is supposed to be kept fresh as long as possible. During the last century, mechanical refrigeration machines and corresponding actor(-network)s, primarily food companies, changed the meaning of ‘freshness’ – considered as life in its best, and therefore, most valuable form.

With the vast connection of cold chains to global cooling networks since the second half of the 20th century, three developments mark a new step in the history of the cryogenic culture: (1) the progress of assisted reproductive technologies due to the cryopreservation of germ cells, (2) the global-scale trade with organs, tissue and other refrigerated medical substances, and (3) the formation of the cryobank industry since the 1970s. By describing these developments from a theoretical point of view, I will argue that the inherent logic of this era of the cryogenic culture can be explained as a concerted effort to access the βίος as a controllable potential. Thereby, a form of governance comes into being which can be defined as modal biopower with refrigeration as a fundamental dispositif.