Amy Laura Hall gives this morning’s plenary; her talk is called,“The Irreproducible Gift and the Incalculable Gift of Life: Toward a Non-Teleological Theology of Procreation.”
She shows a collage of images that display the constructed distinction of “the well-planned family” as against the “merely accidental family.” She cites the Lilly Corporation’s advertising for their ADHD medication Strattera, the slogan of which is “Welcome to Ordinary.”; the American Museum of Natural History’s handout on the Genomic Revolution, “Get the right tests!”; a bipartisan congressional ad to prevent teen pregnancy that shows a pregnant girl with the word “Nobody” plastered across her in large red caps; advertisements for adoption agencies, complete with credit card icons, as love objects; an illustration of the American eugenics movement, including the “Fitter Family” movement; the atom as icon of the family, and the double helix as an icon for the healthy future; and advertisements for baby formula and appliances (she refers to the “factory-farming mother” who pumps her breast milk) and an ad that suggests “Physicans’ Babies Are Better Babies.”
What does she mean by the “Irreproducible Gift”? In Church Dogmatics 3/4, Barth says that the tension and pressure of the socially-instituted obligation to procreate has been removed by the Incarnation, but that now conception and birth now may be received as a true gift. She reads Barth through Kierkegaard; in Philosophical Fragments, the moment has decisive significance. The moment of the Incarnation, death, and resurrection has decisive significance; if the moment doesn’t have this significance, we are speaking merely Socratically. The decisive significance of this moment underlines the gratuity of the incarnation, the non-necessity of all that is, the non-necessity of Christ. Our existence in time is not the rolling out of the inevitable, but is a radical gift. Creation and eschatology cannot be teleological in the sense that the end is in any way a given.
What, then, of procreation? In Acts of Love, Kierkegaard suggests that there is no necessary narration of our identity; the child alone in the woods may be anything. Even more, the child in the womb may be anything. All our existence is radically contingent. But, by becoming receptive to Christ, we are incorporated into the narrative of Christ’s identity (I think; Amy Laura talks awfully fast).
Her concern about biotech is not Fukuyama’s worry that it will fragment society, will dissolve the sentimental ties that hold society together. She argues that biotech crafts serviceable others; we can narrate children in ways serviceable for teh purposes of a capitalist society. Kierkegaard doesn’t so much reject Kant’s Kingdom of Ends, but pushes deeper to ask what it would mean to go beyond Kant to ask what would it mean to see every other as an alter Christus. (I missing a lot; she does talk very fast, with little fluff.) She rejects the “primordial” critique that appeals to a pristine prior condition from which technology effects a division, that “enhancement” amounts to a meretricious artifice.
She does read biotech as a (not Thomistic) gratuitous normativity of grace, not of nature. It is possible to argue that the factory-farm mother is not natural, that the Fisher-Price aquarium in the crib with a remote control to put your child to sleep is not natural.
She wants to take a snapshot of a culture that is about crafting families and children to fit within a particular narration of children’s identity as those who will meet the demands of our present economy. The justification of biotech shifts as women enter the workspace. “The family that leads procreation up to chance risks a burdensome child; the family uses biotechnology to control conception and childbirth can expect to excel.”
The “atom” functions as an icon of the blessed future. As early as 1947, you can find images of the human nostalgic past dying and tangled up in red tape, contrasted with the restored well-beign of the human sphere blessed by the atom from the hand of God. The atom (according to this illustration) will revive agriculture, cities, the home, and human health (the nuclear family — modulating from the family that benefits from atomic power to the family members as the constituent subatomic particles).
The US government sponsors a display for gentic technology whose theme is “what makes you you.” Genes are what make you who you are. At the same time, the display stresses that everyone is the same genetically (lest one infer a basis for racial discrimination). She demonstrates that the public face of biotech presents it as a means of depotentiating the threat of danger that correlates with racial difference, a medical panacea for human difference. Aggression, anxiety, and obesity are allegedly genetic disorders. (She cites advertising copy that sells Lilly ADHD medication as a means for re-incorporating Dad into family life.)
Her main point is a critique of the biotechnological management of contingency, the means for mastering the uncontrollable. It’s a powerful talk, but it would be even more impressive if its elements were more smoothly integrated.
Brian Volck responds by citing a poem, the epigraph of which begins “We wanted to confess our sins, but there were no takers. . . .” The wealthy live as if we can save ourselves; only the poor truly hope, since they have no alternative.
We spent the time after the conference’s official closing ceremony (Brent, saying “Go in peace!” hanging out with our out-of-town pals, and drifting back to Evanston. I walked several miles in the course of the day (John Utz, his daughter Rachel and I got lost looking for a bookstore anywhere near DePaul), I woke up early and didn’t sleep much last night, and I have a big interview tomorrow, so I’m going to bed.
The Ekklesia Project holds a great conference for subversive Christians — a pretty good one for other interested folk, too — and it’ll be back next year; I’d be tickled to see you there.
Posted by AKMA at July 21, 2004 09:41 PM | TrackBackWhat a lot to think about! Thanks for the intro to the Ekklesia Project.
Posted by: Olivia McIntyre at July 22, 2004 11:01 AM