Description
Book SynopsisUses literature to understand and remake our ethics regarding nonhuman animals, old human beings, disabled human beings, and cloned posthumans
Literary Bioethics argues for literature as an untapped and essential site for the exploration of bioethics. Novels, Maren Tova Linett argues, present vividly imagined worlds in which certain values hold sway, casting new light onto those values; and the more plausible and well rendered readers find these imagined worlds, the more thoroughly we can evaluate the justice of those values. In an innovative set of readings, Linett thinks through the ethics of animal experimentation in H.G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau, explores the elimination of aging in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, considers the valuation of disabled lives in Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away, and questions the principles of humane farming through reading Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. By analyzing novels pu
Trade Review
Linett’s articulation of literature as a site of bioethical exploration offers new and essential inroads for conversations on disability. Moving past the ‘thought experiment,’ Linett positions literature as an alternative kind of thought laboratory, one far more interested in whose lives are valued when we think bioethically -- Alison Kafer, author of Feminist, Queer, Crip
The book's writing is lucid, the structure is well organized, the research is meticulously conducted, and the main claims are masterfully argued. Literary Bioethics will be useful for those working in the fields of disability studies, literary studies, sociology, animal studies, age studies, and bioethics. It will be especially helpful for those trying to think through thorny questions having to do with justice for both disabled people and animals. * Disability Studies Quarterly *
Ranging widely across the long twentieth century and skillfully weaving together disparate (and sometimes adversarial) disciplinary and critical perspectives, Literary Bioethics promises to persuade a broad array of readers of the distinctive value of literary ways of knowing as we strive toward justice for sentient lives. * Journal of Modern Literature *
