Abstract
Bioethical discourse on organ donation covers a wide range of topics, from informed consent procedures and scarcity issues up to transplant tourism and organ trade. Over the past decades, this discourse evolved into a stream of documents of immense proportions. Beneath the manifest level of discourse, a more latent dimension can be discerned, revolving around issues of embodiment, the status of the human body and the concept of bodily integrity. Here, the body emerges as something which we have, but at the same time are, and as something which constitutes a whole, while at the same time being a set of replaceable parts. This study examines transplantation discourse from an oblique perspective, using literature and cinema as high-resolution magnifying glasses.
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Notes
- 1.
Whilst this study focusses on organ transplantation cinema as a “different scene”, there are other alternative scenes where the uncanny dimensions of organ procurement are exposed. One unsettling example is China, where prisoners, notably followers of the spiritual Falun Gong movement, are systematically used as a human organ resource (Van Assche 2018; Matas and Trey 2012; Sharif et al. 2014), a practice which constitutes the reverse or perverse side of organ practices in the West (a sinister, etatist version of organ theft).
- 2.
“Cette déviation bouffonne que j’espère barrer, qui est déjà étalée de longues années sous le terme de psychanalyse appliquée” (1968–1969/2006, p. 66).
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Zwart, H.A.E. (2019). Introduction: Organ Recycling and Embodiment. In: Purloined Organs. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05354-3_1
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