Battlestar Galactica, Technology, and Life

Abstract

This chapter explores the forms of life made by technical legality, through the re-imagined series Battlestar Galactica. It is argued that Battlestar Galactica deals directly with the triumph of technology and in so doing charts a way for living within technical legality.This chapter opens with the sovereign and moves to the personal. Battlestar Galactica, however, does not invite a return to the public. Rather the personal is the technical and the distinction between essence and artefact becomes blurred. Here Battlestar Galactica seemingly performs Heidegger’s foundational account of technology that sees technology as consuming humanity leaving a false, destructive and empty shell. Battlestar Galactica does not quite follow this script. It affirms that living remains after the end. Humanity as it has been known has been changed but agency and ‘life’ remains. This location, identified by Haraway, and developed by Braidotti, offers the possibility for living well in technical legality through knowing and feeling the ‘networks of the present.’