Abstract
Bioethical dilemmas, including those over genetic screening, compulsory vaccination, and abortion, have been the subject of ongoing debates in the media, and among the public, professionals, and academic communities. But the paramount bioethical issue in an age of digital technology and new media is the transformation of the very notion of life. This book examines many of the ethical challenges that technology poses to the allegedly sacrosanct idea of the human. In doing so, it goes beyond the traditional understanding of bioethics as a matter for moral philosophy and medicine to propose an “ethics of life” rooted in the relationship between the human and the non-human (both animals and machines) that new technology prompts us to develop. The author describes three cases of “bioethics in action,” through which the concepts of “the human,” “animal,” and “life” are being redefined: the reconfiguration of bodily identity by plastic surgery in a TV makeover show; the reduction of the body to two-dimensional genetic code; and the use of biological material in such examples of “bioart” as Eduardo Kac’s infamous fluorescent green bunny. The book addresses ethics from the interdisciplinary perspective of media and cultural studies, drawing on the writings of thinkers from Agamben and Foucault to Haraway and Hayles. Taking theoretical inspiration in particular from the philosophy of alterity as developed by Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, and Bernard Stiegler, the author makes the case for a new non-systemic, non-hierarchical bioethics that encompasses the kinship of humans, animals, and machines.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publisher | MIT Press |
| Publication status | Published - 2009 |
Keywords
- Moral philosophy
- plastic surgery
- Foucault
- Agamben
- Abortion
- bioart
