>Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 10:32:01 -0700
>From: J Poxon <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Call for papers
>Sender: Society for Women in Philosophy Information and Discussion List
> <[log in to unmask]>
>Approved-by: J Poxon <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Reply-to: J Poxon <[log in to unmask]>
>
>From: Dr Margrit Shildrick <[log in to unmask]>
>
>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:
>[log in to unmask]
>and
>[log in to unmask]
>
>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 ---
>
>
>----------------------
>[log in to unmask]
>
>Dr Margrit Shildrick
>SURI Research Fellow
>Staffordshire University
>and
>Honorary Research Fellow
>University of Liverpool.
>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hilde L. Nelson, Ph.D.
Department of Philosophy
503 South Kedzie Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
(517) 353-3981
[log in to unmask]