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Dr. Melinda Hall will discuss the primary arguments in her book, The Bioethics of Enhancement. She draws out the conflict between transhumanist thinking and disability justice projects. She argues that transhumanist arguments in support of radical human enhancement are inimical to disability justice projects. Transhumanist thinkers, the strongest promoters of human enhancement, and fellow travelers who claim enhancement is a moral obligation, make arguments that rely on the denigration of disabled embodiment and lives. These arguments link disability with risk. The promotion of human enhancement is therefore open to significant disability critique despite transhumanism’s claims to allyship with disability justice activism. In this talk, Dr. Hall will lay out such a disability critique of enhancement and further support her claims by drawing from Foucault’s notion of the biopolitical. She will point toward an alternative vision of enhancement, which poses a disability-inclusive future, accepts the risks of embodiment, and lays groundwork for a counter discourse of enhancement.
The event will take place on 27 October 2022, 16:15 - 17:30.