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7 - Abstracting Embodiment

from Part II - Confronting Global Contradictions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2025

Paul James
Affiliation:
Western Sydney University
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Summary

Human-embodied relations are being fundamentally transformed by increasingly globalised abstracting processes. Developments including the planetary reach of technoscience, cybercapitalism, and communications technologies. They are increasingly framing how we live our bodies. They enable phenomena as diverse as the global trade in body parts and the distribution of pharmaceuticals. However, there is also a less obvious reframing of our bodies going on. Biotechnologies have been steadily remaking the foundations of human procreation, gestation, and identity formation, albeit unevenly in different parts of the world. This enquiry weaves together related themes: modifying genetic organisms, reproducing human life, gestating a fetus, presenting sexual identity, and being vaccinated. In the case of COVID, a technoscientific fix is presented as necessary to mitigate the effects of a world turned upside down by the technologisation and exploitation of planetary ecology. Technoscience is displacing modern science. The chapter seeks to show how technoscientific intervention associated with ideologies of overcoming bodily constraint is remaking what it means to be human.

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Chapter
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Global Crisis and Insecurity
The Human Condition, Darkly
, pp. 154 - 180
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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  • Abstracting Embodiment
  • Paul James, Western Sydney University
  • Book: Global Crisis and Insecurity
  • Online publication: 01 June 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009614221.010
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  • Abstracting Embodiment
  • Paul James, Western Sydney University
  • Book: Global Crisis and Insecurity
  • Online publication: 01 June 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009614221.010
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Abstracting Embodiment
  • Paul James, Western Sydney University
  • Book: Global Crisis and Insecurity
  • Online publication: 01 June 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009614221.010
Available formats
×