Technologies of life and death : from cloning to capital punishment /

Oliver (Vanderbilt Univ.) offers a substantial review of ethical issues relating to technology, personhood, human rights, and moral obligations. Her arguments, which rest on the philosophical foundations of Derrida, help readers peer into the discursive space between accepted binaries--man/woman, human/animal, human/machine, natural/human-made (culture), fantasy/real, and sovereignty/oppression. Oliver explores technology's influence on people's lives from conception to death. Relying on deconstruction, she offers new perspectives on current ethical debates and their subsequent public-policy implications. Oliver first discusses technologies of reproduction, including genetic engineering and artificial insemination. She then challenges feminist themes of "girl power" and motherhood in a reexamination of archetypes and myth; here she introduces the psychoanalytic role of fantasy to illustrate the intertwining of one's innermost thoughts and public actions. Finally, she explores death, particularly capital punishment as it is exercised on both animals and humans. Throughout, readers learn how contemporary liberal society is caught between two competing ideals: the value of each individual life, and the need for generalized principles that allow everyone to live in harmony. Oliver makes a final claim that deconstructionist ethics require people to become morally responsible for the actions they take, those they avoid, and the underlying fantasies and fears that drive those actions. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty. D. Hurst Florida State University