Working at the nexus of bioethics and disability studies, I argue that the quest for human enhancement is at least partially motivated by the rejection of the disabled body. In other words, positive and negative eugenics are paired together in bioethical treatments of enhancement. To demonstrate this, I critically assess the work of transhumanist bioethicists Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu, who strongly promote an assortment of enhancement strategies as moral obligations. I carry my assessment forward by drawing from Michel Foucault and feminist disability studies and using the transhumanist strategy of negative genetic selection as a case study. I claim that transhumanism is perniciously utopian; it figures disability as a site of risk and seeks the proliferation of choice for a utopian agent through radical medical interventions. Marking this restrictive location of disability, which defines disability against a utopian body, I describe parallels between bioethical and political images of disability by investigating the location of disability in liberal theory. Both locations are restrictive and attach stigma to persons with disabilities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-05262013-135853 |
| Date | 17 June 2013 |
| Creators | Hall, Melinda Charis |
| Contributors | Eva Kittay, Charles Scott, Lisa Guenther, Kelly Oliver |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-05262013-135853/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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