Ethics of the Body

The provocative contention of the postmodernist and feminist essays in Ethics of the
Body is that conventional bioethics is out of touch, despite its growing profile. It is out of touch
with an ongoing phenomenological sense of bodies themselves; with the impact of postmodernist theory
as it problematizes the certainties of binary thinking; and with a postmodern culture in which
bioscientific developments force us to question what is meant by the notion of the human self. The
authors demonstrate that the conventional normative framework of bioethics is called into question
by issues as wide ranging as genetic manipulation, disability, high-tech prosthetics, and
intersexuality. The essays show how both the theory and practice of bioethics can benefit from
postmodernism's characteristic fluidity and multiplicity, as well as from the insights of a
reconceived feminist bioethics. They address issues in philosophy, law, bioscientific research,
psychiatry, cultural studies, and feminism from a "postconventional" perspective that looks beyond
the familiar ideas of the body, proposing not a bioethics about the body but a radical ethics of the
body.After exploring notions of difference in both feminist and postmodernist terms, the book
considers specific issues -- including HIV, addiction, borderline personality disorder, and cancer
-- that challenge the principles of conventional bioethics. The focus then turns to questions raised
by biotechnology: one essay rethinks the traditional feminist ethics of care in the context of new
reproductive technology, while others tackle genetic and genomic issues. Finally, the book looks at
embodiment and some specifically anomalous forms of being-in-the-body, including a consideration of
intersex infants and children that draws on feminist, postructuralist, and queer theory.