Dear Colleagues,
I?d like to let you know about my new book,
Bioethics in the Age of New Media, which may be
of interest to some people on this list. It?s a
kind of media/cultural studies/philosophy
bestiary, haunted by various living and nonliving creatures.
Best,
Joanna
-------------
Joanna Zylinska
BIOETHICS IN THE AGE OF NEW MEDIA (MIT Press, 2009)
Bioethical dilemmas?including those over genetic
screening, compulsory vaccination, and
abortion?have been the subject of ongoing
debates in the media, among the public, and in
professional and academic communities. But the
paramount bioethical issue in an age of digital
technology and new media, Joanna Zylinska
argues, is the transformation of the very notion
of life. In this provocative book, Zylinska
examines many of the ethical challenges that
technology poses to the allegedly sacrosanct
idea of the human. In doing so, she goes beyond
the traditional understanding of bioethics as a
matter for moral philosophy and medicine to
propose a new "ethics of life" rooted in the
relationship between the human and the nonhuman
(both animals and machines) that new technology prompts us to develop.
After a detailed discussion of the classical
theoretical perspectives on bioethics, Zylinska
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.
Zylinska 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, Zylinska makes the case
for a new nonsystemic, nonhierarchical bioethics
that encompasses the kinship of humans, animals, and machines.
More information and sample chapters are available here:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11759
--
Dr Joanna Zylinska
Department of Media and Communications
Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross, London SE14 6NW, UK
My website: http://www.joannazylinska.net
Reviews Editor for Culture Machine: http://www.culturemachine.net
