Personhood, Law, and Relationality Amidst the New Biosciences II

Session Submission Type: Open Panel

Abstract

The 21st century is witnessing a profound transformation in law and society because of the implications of the new biosciences and biotechnologies. New technologies are emerging that radically challenge our conceptions of nature and law and that demand new tools in the humanities and social sciences to adequately respond and analyze these practices. This panel starts with the premise that these developments provide novel opportunities to thinking anew about the nature and structure of personhood and relationality. Bioscientific advances in the field of postgenomics, neuroscience, research on the microbiome, and immunology are encouraging thought provoking problems for the foundational cultural and legal principles of personality as well as their attendant notion of personal rights. Complex issues arise in the intersection of law, biology, and society, and the panel aims to explore these problems of what can be called emerging issues in “biolegality”—the coming together of biology and legality—and to revisit the concept of personhood in posthuman and relational ways.

Sub Unit

• Papers for Open Panels / Personhood, law and relationality amidst the new biosciences

Chair

• Sonja Van Wichelen, University of Sydney

Individual Presentations

• Racial Futurity: Biolegality and the Question of Black Life - Nadine Ehlers, University of Sydney

• The Transmissive Womb: Rethinking Race in Gestational Surrogacy through Environmental Epigenetics - Jaya Keaney, University of Sydney

• Narrative Epistemology in Jurisprudence and Elective Affinities in Productions of Responsibility for Persons in Pain - Seamus Barker, University of Sydney

• Unrighteous Ambiguity: Reproductive Technology and navigations of maternal, fetal, infant and paternal personhood - Debbi Long, RMIT University, Melbourne

• Bio-Polygraphs, Nonconsensual Data, and the Suspicious Body of the Unaccompanied Minor - Zsuzsanna Dominika Ihar, University of Sydney

Session Organizer

• Marc De Leeuw, The Universityof New South Wales