Of swans and ugly ducklings: Bioethics between humans, animals, and machines

Configurations

Volumn 15, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 125-150

  Zylinska, Joanna ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 62549146725     PISSN: 10631801     EISSN: 10806520     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/con.0.0028     Document Type: Article

References (75)

1. The Swan voiceover, courtesy of Reality News Online, http://www.realitynewsonline.com (accessed July 5, 2005).
2. Some other makeover shows that have gained international popularity include Bravo's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, BBC's What Not to Wear, ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, BBC's Ground Force, and Channel 4's 10 Years Younger.
3. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984), p. 136.
4. Ibid., p. 137.
5. Ibid., p. 139 (emphasis in original).
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 1.
9. Ibid., p. 3.
10. Ibid., p. 4.
11. Ibid., p. 7.
12. Ibid., p. 9.
13. 13.Ibid.
14. Ibid., p. 20. See also Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 1-7.
15. Giorgio Agamben, "No to Biopolitical Tattooing," 2004, http://www.truthout.org/cgibin/artman/exec/view.cgi/4/3249.
16. Agamben, State of Exception (above, n. 14), p. 39. I should add here that I remain somewhat skeptical of repeating verbatim Agamben's argument that politics today can be best understood as biopolitics, since political economy, Marxist theory, or psychoanalysis (to mention but a few theoretical frameworks) can provide equally compelling accounts of what is going on in the world today. I am also troubled by the negativity of Agamben's argument, a negativity that I believe seriously constrains his search for a new politics and new ethics. I hope my own ethical proposition developed in this article offers a way out of what I see as an Agambenian impasse.
17. The inspiration for this paper came from a piece by Myrna Blyth in National Review Online, "Skin Deep," which opened with the following words: "This past Monday night was a makeover marathon on TV. While President Bush outlined his plans for the makeover of Iraq to the Army War College on the Fox News network, much of America was tuned into The Swan, the mother of all makeover shows, on the other Fox channel," May 24, 2004, http://www.nationalreview.com/blyth/blyth200405270957. asp (accessed June 1, 2005).
18. Sander L. Gilman, Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 19.
19. Ibid., p. 18.
20. Ibid., p. 21.
21. The Swan, Fox, Producer Nely Galán, 2004.
22. Gilman, Making the Body Beautiful (above, n. 18), p. 30.
23. Agamben, Homo Sacer (above, n. 8), p. 20.
24. Agamben, Stare of Exception (above, n. 14), pp. 3-4.
25. Agamben, Homo Sacer (above, n. 8), p. 73.
26. "'To ban' someone is to say that anyone may harm him" (Cavalca, quoted in ibid., p. 105).
27. Ibid.
28. Michel Foucault, "Technologies of the Self," in Technologies of the Self, ed. L. Martin et al. (London: Tavistock Books, 1990), p. 18.
29. Gilman, Making the Body Beautiful (above, n. 18), p. 333.
30. Emmanuel Levinas, "Ethics as First Philosophy," in The Levinas Reader, ed. Sean Hand (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), p. 83.
31. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), p. 66.
32. Ibid., p. 194.
33. Even if the shift to the first person singular may read somewhat awkwardly here, it is important to retain this pronoun - instead of using the more generic "one," "we," or "man" - in order to underline the singularity and irreplaceability of the obligation that structures Levinas's ethics: this obligation and responsibility is only ever mine, rather than "human" or "ours."
34. In makeover programs, this is often a code word for the "Jewish" nose. See Gilman, Making the Body Beautiful (above, n. 18).
35. Foucault's work on the "care of self" would provide one possible way of interpreting plastic-surgery clients and makeover-show participants as agents of their transformation, not just victims of ideology and overbearing hegemonic power relations. Body makeover could then be read as a practice of self-transformation, an attempt to establish an ethical relation to oneself through a set of select techniques. Mark Poster's article in this issue analyzes The Swan's participants through this prism of the Foucaldian care of self. For more on the concept of "care of self," see Foucault, "Technologies of the Self" (above, n. 28).
36. See Agamben, Homo Sacer (above, n. 8), pp. 186-87.
37. Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, trans. Kevin Attell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), p. 6;
38. Jacques Derrida, "The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)", trans. David Wills, Critical Inquiry 28: Winter (2002): 369-418.
39. Agamben, The Open, p. 38.
40. Ibid., p. 26.
41. See Dinesh Wadiwel, "Animal by Any Other Name? Patterson and Agamben Discuss Animal (and Human) Life," Borderlands: e-journal, 3:1 (2004), http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol3no1-2004/wadiwel- animal.htm; Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus, trans. Richard Beardsworth and George Collins (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998);
42. Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 75-76.
43. Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Free Association Books, 1991), p. 152 (originally published as Donna Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," Socialist Review 80 [1985]: 65-107).
44. Ibid., p. 149.
45. Cavell, quoted in Wolfe, Animal Rites (above, n. 40), p. 5.
46. Derrida, "The Animal" (above, n. 37), p. 41.
47. Wolfe, Animal Rites (above, n. 40), p. 101.
48. See ibid., p. 105.
49. Ibid., pp. 104-105.
50. In her second book, Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York/London: Routledge, 1989), Donna Haraway explored the complex relations between humans, animals, and technoscience, focusing on primatology.
51. Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003), p. 10.
52. Ibid., p. 4.
53. Ibid., p. 5.
54. Donna Haraway, Modest-Witness@Second-Millennium. FemaleMan-Meets- OncoMouse™ (New York/London: Routledge, 1997).
55. Haraway, Companion Species Manifesto (above, n. 49), p. 9.
56. Ibid., p. 3.
57. Ibid., p. 12.
58. Ibid., pp. 2-3.
59. Ibid., p. 9.
60. Ibid., p. 25.
61. Ibid., p. 50.
62. Ibid., p. 53.
63. For an alternative nonsystemic theory of ethics for humans, animals, and machines, see the chapter "Bio-ethics and Cyberfeminism," in Joanna Zylinska, The Ethics of Cultural Studies (London/New York: Continuum, 2005), pp. 138-158.
64. Haraway, Companion Species Manifesto (above, n. 49), p. 61.
65. The last few paragraphs are based on my review of Haraway's Companion Species Manifesto: Joanna Zylinska, "Dogs R Us?" parallax, 12:1 (2006): 129-131.
66. http://www.swanuk.org.uk/index%20frame.htm, Swan Sanctuary's website (accessed June 1, 2005).
67. Wolfe, Animal Rites (above, n. 40), p. 26.
68. See ibid., p. 26.
69. Ibid., p. 65.
70. Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (London/Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 79-153.
71. Jacques Derrida, Adieu: To Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).
72. Wolfe, Animal Rites (above, n. 40), p. 16.
73. Derrida, "The Animal" (above, n. 37), p. 402 (emphasis in original).
74. Ibid., p. 400.
75. The Ear Project by the Australian artist Stelarc, aimed at exploring alternate body architectures, involves constructing a replica of the artist's ear, equipping it with a microphone and implanting it on his arm. For information on the earlier stages of this project, see Stelarc's website: http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/quarterear/index.html (accessed July 10, 2007).