Between Bioethics and Literature: Representations of (post-)human identities in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of The Flood
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Valentina Adami,
Valentina Adami holds a PhD in English Studies from the University of Verona. She is Adjunct Professor of English language at the University of Verona, and member of AIDEL (Associazione Italiana di Diritto e Letteratura), AIA (Associazione Italiana di Anglistica) and ESSE (European Society for the Study of English). Her fields of research are trauma studies; law, language and literature; bioethics, medicine and literature; ecolinguistics and ecocriticism.
Abstract
Literature can contribute to bioethical debate in several ways: by enabling us to see cases as embedded in specific human contexts, by enhancing our sensitivity to the narratives of others, and by developing a broader outlook to human identity. Both literature and bioethics are interested in the future of humanity and call attention to the dangers of uncontrolled scientific progress, looking for a balance between the excesses of technophobia on the one hand and technophilia on the other. In a context in which scientists face increasingly difficult ethical choices, novels such as Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood can help us understand what it means to be human, which after all is the ultimate goal of all scientific as well as humanistic endeavors.
About the author
Valentina Adami holds a PhD in English Studies from the University of Verona. She is Adjunct Professor of English language at the University of Verona, and member of AIDEL (Associazione Italiana di Diritto e Letteratura), AIA (Associazione Italiana di Anglistica) and ESSE (European Society for the Study of English). Her fields of research are trauma studies; law, language and literature; bioethics, medicine and literature; ecolinguistics and ecocriticism.
©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Focus: Identity
- In Search of a Legal Identity: Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta
- A Biojuridical Reading of Dracula
- Women's Legal Identity in the Context of Gothic Effacement: Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria or The Wrongs of Woman and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper
- Voice and Identity in the Fairy Tale: Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch
- “Are you alive?” Issues in Self-awareness and Personhood of Organic Artificial Intelligence
- Between Bioethics and Literature: Representations of (post-)human identities in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of The Flood
- Law and Literature: Jewish and Christian models
- The Vitality of Emotional Background Knowledge in Court
- Corpus delicti: The evidence of the body as body of evidence in Thomas Hobbes's political imagination
- Book Reviews
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Focus: Identity
- In Search of a Legal Identity: Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta
- A Biojuridical Reading of Dracula
- Women's Legal Identity in the Context of Gothic Effacement: Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria or The Wrongs of Woman and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper
- Voice and Identity in the Fairy Tale: Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch
- “Are you alive?” Issues in Self-awareness and Personhood of Organic Artificial Intelligence
- Between Bioethics and Literature: Representations of (post-)human identities in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of The Flood
- Law and Literature: Jewish and Christian models
- The Vitality of Emotional Background Knowledge in Court
- Corpus delicti: The evidence of the body as body of evidence in Thomas Hobbes's political imagination
- Book Reviews
