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Inquiring into Animal Enhancement: Model or Countermodel of Human Enhancement? pp 13–33Cite as

Animal Enhancement: Technovisionary Paternalism and the Colonisation of Nature

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Part of the book series: Health, Technology and Society ((HTE))

Abstract

This chapter reconstructs the debate around animal enhancement and describes what is currently being done in experimental research. It then goes on to show how visions of animal enhancement are currently discussed by their transhumanist advocates. These discussions use the positive rhetorical force of an expression like énhancement’, bypass the practical aspects of what supporting ‘animal enhancement technologies’ concretely means — thus the problem of animal experiments — and rely on general arguments that stress the need to eliminate all the negative sides of ‘nature’. Suggesting a strong form of human-centred paternalism, the animal enhancement project presents ‘nature’ as a last frontier which can be colonised by the human technological enterprise.

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Authors
  1. Arianna Ferrari
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France

    Simone Bateman

  2. Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France

    Jean Gayon

  3. Université Catholique de Lyon, France

    Sylvie Allouche

  4. Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France

    Jérôme Goffette

  5. Université Paris Descartes, France

    Michela Marzano

Copyright information

© 2015 Arianna Ferrari

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Ferrari, A. (2015). Animal Enhancement: Technovisionary Paternalism and the Colonisation of Nature. In: Bateman, S., Gayon, J., Allouche, S., Goffette, J., Marzano, M. (eds) Inquiring into Animal Enhancement: Model or Countermodel of Human Enhancement?. Health, Technology and Society. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137542472_2

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