Title
Technologies of Life and Death : From Cloning to Capital Punishment / Kelly Oliver.
ISBN
9780823252268
Published
New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2013]
Copyright
©2013
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (272 p.)
Other Standard Identifiers
10.1515/9780823252268 doi
Call Number
QH332 .O45 2013eb
Dewey Decimal Classification
174.2
Summary
The central aim of this book is to approach contemporary problems raised by technologies of life and death as ethical issues that call for a more nuanced approach than mainstream philosophy can provide. To do so, it draws on the recently published seminars of Jacques Derrida to analyze the extremes of birth and dying insofar as they are mediated by technologies of life and death. With an eye to reproductive technologies, it shows how a deconstructive approach can change the very terms of contemporary debates over technologies of life and death, from cloning to surrogate motherhood to capital punishment, particularly insofar as most current discussions assume some notion of a liberal individual.The ethical stakes in these debates are never far from political concerns such as enfranchisement, citizenship, oppression, racism, sexism, and the public policies that normalize them. Technologies of Life and Death thus provides pointers for rethinking dominant philosophical and popular assumptions about nature and nurture,chance and necessity, masculine and feminine, human and animal, and what it means to be a mother or a father. In part, the book seeks to disarticulate a tension between ethics and politics that runs through these issues in order to suggest a more ethical politics by turning the force of sovereign violence back against itself. In the end, it proposes that deconstructive ethics with a psychoanalytic supplement can provide a corrective for moral codes and political clichés that turn us into mere answering machines.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 03. Jan 2023)
Available in Other Form
print 9780823251087
Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Moral Machines and Political Animals
Part One. Sex Machines
One. Genetic Engineering: Deconstructing Grown versus Made
Two. Artificial Insemination: Deconstructing Choice versus Chance
Part Two. Medusa Machines
Three. Girl Powered: Poetic Majesty against Sovereign Majesty
Four. Rearview Mirror: Art, Violence, and Sublimation
Five. Elephant Autopsy: Optic Machinery and the Scale of Sovereignty
Six. Deadly Devices: Animals, Capital Punishment, and the Scope of Sovereignty
Seven. Death Penalties: Ethics, Politics, and the Unconscious of Sovereignty
Notes
Bibliography
Index
