FYI. Stefanie Rixecker ECOFEM Coordinator ------- Forwarded message follows ------- From: Dr Margrit Shildrick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Could you please post the following call for papers which may be of interest to some readers of the SWIP listserv.If you have any questions about this please let me know. many thanks, Margrit Shildrick CALL FOR PAPERS We are seeking papers of up to 7000 words for a new book - Rethinking Feminist Bioethics: The Challenge of the Postmodern - to be edited by Margrit Shildrick and Roxanne Mykitiuk. Contributions are invited from all disciplinary backgrounds including legal studies, health sciences, womens studies, and science and technology, as well as philosophy. Papers may include empirical or theoretical issues relating to postmodernist feminist perspectives on bioethics. Contributors will be expected to clearly address the difference that postmodernism can and does make to bioethics, although they may have reservations about its adequacy. 350 word abstracts or draft papers to hand must be received by 27 April 2001. All proposals should be submitted by email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED] Routledge has expressed initial interest publishing such a collection. Details of proposal: This will be the first collection on feminist bioethics that confronts the implications of recent theoretical advances in postmodernism, together with, where appropriate, the radically unsettling effects of biotechnology in the era of postmodernity. It is the editors' contention that feminist bioethics in general, although highly effective in its critique of mainstream masculinist ethical paradigms - arising particularly form consequentialism, deontology, and to some extent from virtue ethics - has remained largely closed to alternative models that radically contest and deconstruct not just the form, but the ground itself on which ethical decisions are assumed to be based. Where the feminst ethics of care, for example, was initially a highly significant breakthrough that mobilised new ways of thinking about the relations that underlie bioethics, it has over the years become somewhat entrenched as a focus of feminist thought. In our view, the area of bioethics, in particular, has become characterised by a number of largely unproblematised concepts that act to define and limit the parameters of enquiry, rather than opening up the field to new theoretical and practical developments. At a time when the conventional notions of the body, the subject, consent and autonomy, the nature of the human, and indeed the meaning of ethics itself, are all being deeply contested, it seems to us that feminist bioethics is increasingly unable to answer to the needs of the new century. It is almost as though nothing had changed either practically or theoretically in the last decade or so that would test the adequacy of earlier models. In consequence, feminist bioethics seems to have little new to say about the most urgent issues, many of which would have been inconceivable even as little as a few years ago. It is within this context that Rethinking Feminist Bioethics intends to embrace a very different set of theoretical approaches that reflect the radical changes that have already taken place, and which continue to develop. It asks what difference does postmodernism and postmodernity make to the way in which we frame bioethics, and what are the implications in the substantive arena? In place of a homogenising tendency that belies the avowed feminist sensitivity to difference, the collection will be open to the fluidity and multiplicity that characterises postmodernist thinking. The point is not to replace existing models as though there could be a successor ethics, but to open them up to critique, and suggest that alternative approaches might better serve the ethical agenda. Nor should it be supposed that a postmodernism approach is relevant only to those questions where the material circumstances themselves are characteristic of postmodernity - as, for example, in the areas of genetic engineering, or xenotransplantation. On the contrary, we want to push for a reconsideration of all ethical concerns in light of postmodernist insights. The ethics of the ordinary, everyday ways in which our bodies are treated are as much subject to critical reflection as the most high-tech procedure. What is at stake throughout is a reconceived understanding of what it is to be an embodied human subject engaged as an actor in a moral landscape, but one that takes none of those terms for granted. The lack of stable givens, the fluid materiality and temporality, the constructed nature of both bodies and selves, and the uncertainty associated with postmodernism do not disqualify it from the ethical arena, as many modernists suppose, but call up the need to fundamentally rethink what counts as ethics. The purpose of this book is explore these issues in the context of a bioethics - an ethics of the body - that is adequate both to feminist thinking and to the broad area of biomedicine. Some sample questions for consideration: - How does the concept of undecidability lend itself to a substantive bioethics? - If both bodies and selves are discursive constructions, what is the place of moral agency in a substantive bioethics? - What specific challenges does the operation of advanced biotechnology pose to a conventional ethics grounded on the notion of a securely embodied self? - What is at stake for feminism in contesting its own orthodoxies and rethinking bioethics? - Could a reconceived ethics of care operate within a postmodernist framework? - Given that bioethics is widely subject to legal formalisation, what are the implications of an openess to the postmodernist perspective? - In what way do certain unstable forms of embodiment - such as HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, ME, and others - already contest the adequacy of conventional bioethics? Rationale for inclusion: The main criterion for inclusion of specific chapters in the collection is that contributors should be able and willing to engage with the theoretical advances - and where applicable, the substantive consequences - of postmodernist modes of analysis. We do not expect uniform acceptance of the efficacy of such analyses, but rather a familiarity with them that allows the author to reconsider the issues in hand. Selected papers will be expected to display global scope, attention to cultural differences and clear feminist input. The latter could be demonstrated in a number of ways: a) development of a feminist ethical response to the new biotechnological advances which may or may not fall within the conventional area of biomedicine; b) critique of masculinist approaches to bioethics, centring on a specifically feminist engagement with postconventional and postmodernist approaches; c) rethinking of issues that are particular to women - such as concerns around reproduction, fertility, sexuality and so on. We do not envisage that all contributors will define themselves primarily as bioethicists, but we do expect that the question of ethics will be treated with rigour, rather than simply implied. As the aim of the book is to unsettle the unproblematised certainties of a feminist bioethics establishment that has largely ignored postmodernism, contributors should be prepared to offer some degree of explanation of unfamiliar terms, rather than assuming extensive knowledge of pomo theory. Similarly, given that readers will come from a wide range of discourses, any technical language should be adequately introduced. All papers should be either original or have had very limited publication. Expanded versions of relevant papers given at the FAB Conference in London 2000 are very welcome provided that they have not been published elsewhere. --- End Forwarded Message --- ---------------------- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dr Margrit Shildrick SURI Research Fellow Staffordshire University and Honorary Research Fellow University of Liverpool. ------- End of forwarded message ------- ************************************ Dr. Stefanie S. Rixecker, Senior Lecturer Environmental Management & Design Division Lincoln University, Canterbury PO Box 84 Aotearoa New Zealand E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fax: 64-03-325-3841 ************************************
