The Rhetoric of Enhancing the Human: Examining the Tropes of “the Human” and “Dignity” in...

The Rhetoric of Enhancing the Human: Examining the Tropesof “the Human” and “Dignity” in Contemporary Bioethical Debatesover Enhancement Technologies

Kurt Zemlicka

Philosophy and Rhetoric, Volume 46, Number 3, 2013, pp. 257-279 (Article)

Published by Penn State University Press

For additional information about this article

Access provided by The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (18 Sep 2013 15:55 GMT)

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/par/summary/v046/46.3.zemlicka.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/par/summary/v046/46.3.zemlicka.html

Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 46, No. 3, 2013 Copyright © 2013 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

The Rhetoric of Enhancing the Human: Examining the Tropes of “the Human” and “Dignity” in Contemporary Bioethical Debates over Enhancement Technologies

Kurt Zemlicka

abstr act

The task of this article is to explore the current state of bioethical debates over enhancement technologies as articulated through its two dichotomous ideological camps. It aims to explain why the conservative and posthumanist movements have reached a point where they fail to engage with each other and how we can recon-ceptualize the bioethical endeavor in a way that does not force the public to adhere to a framing of enhancement technologies as either universally desirable or abhor-rent. In order to do so, I turn to the work of Lacan and Deleuze to explain why attempts to define what is essentially human always enter what I call “tropological regress,” or the endless procession of linguistic tropes that are artificially linked to transcendental conceptions of “the good.” I aim to diagnose why conservative and posthumanist discourses on enhancement technologies find themselves irreconcil-ably opposed.

Keywords: Rhetoric, Psychoanalysis, Enhancement Technologies, Affect, Bioethics.

In the rapidly expanding field of bioethics, philosophers and critics have taken on the task of attempting to understand the ethical implications related to the development of enhancement technologies. A term which

PR 46.3_01_Zemlicka.indd 257 06/08/13 11:38 AM

kurt zemlicka

258

itself is still hotly contested in the field, “enhancement technologies” refer generally to the application of biotechnological devices aimed at augment-ing human physical and mental traits. According to the President’s Council on Bioethics, which was commissioned in 2001 to “advise the President on bioethical issues that may emerge as a consequence of advances in biomedi-cal science and technology,” enhancement technologies are broadly defined as “those well-meaning and strictly voluntary uses of biomedical technol-ogy through which the user is seeking some improvement or augmentation of his or her own capacities, or, from similar benevolent motives, of those of his or her children” (Bush 2001; President’s Council on Bioethics 2003). Leon Kass, the former president of the council, defines enhancement tech-nologies as possessing “powers that affect the capacities and activities of the human body, powers that affect the capacities and activities of the mind or soul, and powers that affect the shape of the human lifecycle, at both ends and in between” (2003). Given this definition, enhancement technologies can range from the genetic modification of a fetus to prevent hereditary diseases to, as Kass puts it, “the bizarre prospect of machine-brain inter-action and implanted nanotechnological devices” (2003). Despite the vast range of possible implementations, these technologies seem to share one common trait: they represent “efforts to preserve and augment the vitality of the body and to enhance the happiness of the soul” (2003).

The task of this article is to explore the current state of bioethical debates over enhancement technologies as articulated through its two dichotomous ideological camps. It aims to explain why the conservative and posthuman-ist movements have reached a point where they fail to engage with each other and to explore how we can reconceptualize the bioethical endeavor in a way that does not force the public to adhere to a framing of enhance-ment technologies as either universally desirable or abhorrent. In order to do so, I turn to the work of Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze to explain why attempts to define what is essentially human always enter what I call “tropological regress,” or the endless procession of linguistic tropes that are artificially linked to transcendental conceptions of “the good.” By examin-ing how those tropes are artificially presented as capturing affective ele-ments that are passed off as transcendent and how that capture is then used to conceal its artificial origins, I aim to diagnose why conservative and post-humanist discourses on enhancement technologies find themselves irrec-oncilably opposed. The article is divided into four sections. The first offers a framing of the current debate over enhancement technologies and charac-terizes the stalemate between the two positions. In section two I attempt to


the rhetoric of enhancing the human

259

demonstrate why the attempt to define what is essentially human is always mired in tropological regress. Drawing on the work of Jacques Lacan and Christian Lundberg I aim to show how the process of signification is char-acterized by the interplay between metaphor and metonymy and how they work together to comprise what Lundberg calls “the tropological economy” of contemporary bioethics. The third section demonstrates how the field’s inability to come to terms with this tropological regress leads to arbitrary attempts to foreclose the tropological system by arguing for transcendent principles that conceal their own contingent, artificial nature. This, I argue, is what has lead to the stalemate in the field. Using the work of Lacan, Gilles Deleuze and Lawrence Grossberg, I attempt to account for this pro-cess by arguing that the metaphor of “human dignity” is utilized by both sides to channel certain affective investments under the guise of referencing transcendent elements of human essence. In the conclusion I offer a recon-ceptualization of the bioethical endeavor that embraces the tropological nature of “the human” and that shows how it can be utilized to develop an ethic that is neither blindly reactionary nor overly permissive of proposed enhancement technologies.

framing the debate over enhancement technologiesBecause they possess the ability to fundamentally alter our species’ physical and mental abilities, enhancement technologies reframe some of the philo-sophical and ethical questions that have always troubled human society. As Kass points out, they highlight

the weightiest questions of bioethics, touching on the ends and goals of the biomedical enterprise, the nature and meaning of human flourishing, and the intrinsic threat of dehumanization (or the promise of super-humanization). It compels attention to what it means to be a human being and to be active as a human being. And it gets us beyond our narrow preoccupation with the “life issues” . . . to deal with what is genuinely novel and worrisome in the biotechnical revolution: not the old crude power to kill the creature made in God’s image, but the science-based sophisticated power to remake him after our own fantasies (2003).

It is therefore easy to see why the enhancement issue has become the nexus of an increasingly stratified debate between two ideological camps. On


kurt zemlicka

260

the one hand there are the proponents of enhancement technologies who believe that they represent a step toward posthumanity. Nick Bostrom has argued that if we follow the possibilities of enhancement technologies to their logical endpoint, we will enter a world radically different from our own. Bestowed with “superintelligence,” posthuman inhabitants would possess the ability to fundamentally alter both themselves and their envi-ronment: “The superintelligent inhabitants of this world are autopotent, meaning that they have complete power over and operational understand-ing of themselves. . . . An autopotent being could . . . transform itself into the shape of a woman, a man, or a tree. Such a being could also easily enter any subjective state it wants to be in” (Bostrom 2008). Enhancement tech-nologies, according to this viewpoint, represent the tools that will facilitate the next step in human evolution and therefore their development is seen as a universal good.

Posthumanist thought has drawn a tremendous amount of resistance from a burgeoning field of scholars, Kass included, who have come to define themselves as “conservative bioethicists.” The movement argues that we are now at a point in history where our technological advancement threatens to outpace our ethical understanding of how to develop and utilize enhance-ment technologies. As Kass points out, “Many people are increasingly wor-ried about where biotechnology may be taking us. We are concerned about . . . what we might do to ourselves. We are concerned that our society might be harmed and that we ourselves might be diminished . . . in ways that could undermine the highest and richest possibilities of human life” (2003). Armed with these concerns, the movement has mobilized itself to inject traditionally conservative values into policy-making recommendations aimed at limiting the development and implementation of enhancement technology. According to Yuval Levin, a leading scholar in the movement, “Bioethics, at the juncture of politics and science, is where the struggle for the character of the new biotechnological age will be waged. And conser-vatives are right to enter the fray as they have” (2003, 63). He outlines the conservative project as a “mission to prevent our transformation into a cul-ture without awe filled with people without souls. . . . And its achievement is, properly, a key priority of the American right” (2003, 65).

Eric Cohen outlines the five main themes of conservative bioethics: “(1) an understanding of human beings as ethical animals; (2) an understanding of human equality from conception to natural death; (3) a sensibility about the meaning of mortality; (4) an account of the nature of marriage, family, and procreation; and (5) an understanding of the character of human experience



261

and human flourishing” (2006, 47). Influencing all of these themes are the fundamental questions of what it means to have “a biological life” and what it means to have “a distinctly human biological life” (Cohen 2006, 47). The “distinctly human,” from a conservative standpoint, refers to a life that begins at conception and ends at a death that has not been delayed by enhancement. Furthermore, human attributes must be worked toward in order to facilitate an appreciation for how they are attained. As Cohen explains, “cultivated bodies and cultivated minds must remain enough ‘our doing’ if they are to be worthy of genuine admiration” (2006, 51). This logic applies to both physi-cal and mental enhancements. Both the overcoming of physical limitations and the experience of psychic trauma are considered to be a prerequisite to “human flourishing” and thus need to be maintained in order for human beings to have a properly human life. Ultimately, the fundamental conserva-tive argument against human enhancement is that technologies “aiming to improve one set of human attributes [risk] undermining the human whole that makes us function well in the first place” (Cohen 2006, 50). In other words, human enhancement technologies threaten to irrevocably disrupt our ontological status as human beings, and that ontological status ought be preserved.

The emergence of the conservative bioethics movement has had a massive impact on the whole of American bioethics. According to Ruth Macklin, a critic of the conservatives, the movement represents a shift in how bioethical debates are structured in the field. “There have always been contributors to bioethics on both sides (in some cases, multiple sides),” she writes, “but until recently, authors did not self-identify as liber-als or conservatives, nor were they, with rare exceptions, labeled as such by their opponents in specific debates or controversies” (2006, 34). Linking the movement to the resurgence of conservative political ideology in the execu-tive and legislative branches in the early 2000s, Macklin sees “the introduc-tion into bioethics of labels once reserved for a stance on political issues” as an extension of the logic of the “most conservative wing of the Republican party,” which “is obsessed with matters related to procreation, prenatal life, and extracorporeal embryos, and has put those issues high on their political and legislative agenda” (2006, 34–35).

The politicization of bioethics manifests itself in the argumentative strategies deployed by conservative bioethicists, which differ tremendously from those used by their posthumanist counterparts. Levin argues that the task of the conservative movement “is to enshrine in policy the substance of nearly universal moral sentiments”: “It must transform moral sentiments


kurt zemlicka

262

into arguments for morality. Its chief ally in this effort is the deep moral wisdom at the heart of our civilization—by which most Americans live their lives” (2003, 63). Central to this goal is the ability of the movement to translate its ideas into solid political practice. Levin implores the move-ment to “engage in some hard politics. . . . This means that in the short-term, as it works to formulate its worldview, a conservative bioethics should also seek to use the force of public opinion to make practical inroads, and should be engaged in politics, not just contemplation” (2003, 64–65).

American bioethical debates over enhancement technologies have reached an impasse: neither side can seem to engage the other on the same conceptual plane. The conservatives have proven themselves to be quite adept at playing on the public’s affective aversion to the strangeness of enhancement technologies—a strategy that relies on the fact that “implicit sentiments and intuitions are being sucked out of our public life much faster than they are disappearing from our private lives” (Levin 2003, 64).1 Conceptualizing how to engage with each other is therefore the main issue facing both conservative and posthumanist bioethicists. While both sides found their stances on a conceptual definition of the essential qualities of the human, they provide vastly different understandings of its ontological heritage. Therefore, in order to find a way forward out of the ideologi-cal stalemate around the debate over enhancement technologies, we must examine how each side determines what is essentially human. To do so, I analyze each position through the foundational texts of some of the lead-ing authors from both sides of the controversy. However, before I begin it is necessary to understand why attempting to signify the essential status of “the human” has lead to the ontological antinomy that characterizes con-temporary bioethics.

signifying “the human”The inherent paradox in attempting to define the essential qualities of “the human,” especially in ethical and legal discourses that rely on precise linguistic definitions, is that it must articulate something that supposedly rests in an “objective” reality outside of linguistic signification. As such, all forays into isolating the fundamental components that denote humanness are necessarily rhetorical in that they must perform a specific act of lin-guistic labor: an artificial linkage must be created that attaches a signifier (“the human”) to a concept (essential qualities of humanness). This is even more difficult given the fact that the concept of “essential humanness” is



263

not a quantifiable object; additional signifiers must be linked to additional concepts and then solidified around a cogent, conceptual understanding of essence, which then must be linked back to “the human.” Thus the field of discourse in bioethical debates is predicated solely on the artificial link-ing of the trope of “the human” to other tropes that themselves artificially coalesce to form a concept of essence.

Jacques Lacan provides an analytic framework for this process in his conceptualization of the nature of symbolization. Critiquing structuralist accounts of linguistics for their inattentiveness to speech (parole), under-stood as the utilization of the symbolizing apparatuses of language to con-vey specific concepts, he argues that it is through the subject’s attempts to link together signifiers with concepts that “all reality has come to man” and that it is “through its ongoing action that he sustains [it]” (2006, 265). Furthermore, links between signifiers and concepts are never given; hence Lacan’s fascination with rhetoric: the labor of linking signifiers to referents requires an artificial investment by the subject since all discursive fields are comprised of tropes that function like “links by which a necklace firmly hooks onto a link of another necklace made of links” (2006, 418). The two tropes Lacan identifies as forming these links are metonymy and meta-phor. As Christian Lundberg theorizes, “Metonymy describes . . . any point where signs and representations are articulated to one another as a point of investment producing a meaning for a subject” and “metaphor describes a function whereby certain metonymic connections become particularly significant points of investment, exerting a regulatory role on a chain of signifiers by retroactively organizing the series of metonymic connections within which the metaphor is nested” (2009, 389). Taken together, the tro-pological linkages within a field of discourse create “economies, within which contingent metonymic connections form the basic articulations that produce meaning, and where some elements in a discourse take on a decided privilege in metaphorically regulating the interaction of other signs or representational elements” (2009, 389).

Here, metaphor and metonymy are understood differently from the way they are traditionally defined. Instead of being “mere” ornaments of language, they instead are understood to represent a specific quality of the formal elements of discourse. As Lundberg argues, the notion of particular public discourse is textual in that it consists of a particular economy of tropes that frame the issue. More precisely, “An individual text has a kind of integrity that is only purchased by its reference both to the specific econo-mies of tropological exchange from which it inherits specific tropes, and to


kurt zemlicka

264

the more general economy of tropological exchange that constitutes it as a site of affective investment” (2012, 97). Be it discussion around the Passion of the Christ or enhancement technologies, each discourse must balance an economy of tropes specific to its content, as well as a larger economy that channels affective investment within its boundaries. Both of these econ-omies are constituted by the uses of metaphor and metonymy deployed within the discourse itself. According to Lundberg, “Lacan insisted on locating the functions of trope in relation to the contingency of signify-ing bodies and the concrete investments that subjects make in reproducing and repeating signifying practices” (2012, 95). This schematic is essential to understanding the specific sites of affective investment within a text, which differentiates it from an approach that sees these tropes as ornamen-tal. These sites, exposed with a Lacanian understanding of the rhetorical deployment of tropes, reveal the simultaneous enactment of contradictory or incommensurable definitions of the concept of “the human” from each side of the debate while offering insight into why neither side will “stand down” from their affective investments in those definitions, leading to the current stalemate.

What is critical for my purposes here is that the interplay between metaphor and metonymy is never fixed in these discourses. Specifically, the notions of “the human” deployed by each side facilitate the tropologi-cal regress that is inherent to any affectively charged definitional practice. Whereas Lundberg argues that “when specific metonymic connections become particularly significant points of investment, organizing a set of subsidiary metonymic connections around them, such connections become metaphors” (2012, 78) my analysis seeks to demonstrate that this process of “tropological sliding” from metonym to metaphor in matters of affectively invested public discourse happens in an infinitely regressive manner. An understanding of Lacan’s two tropes is essential to grasping this regression; his approach to metaphor and metonymy not only helps locate the specific sites of affective investment within a given public discourse but also sheds light on the tension between the two sides.

It is worth pointing out that the problem of the regression of tropes is inherent to all language. One needs look no further than the dictionary to note that words are used to define other words (the word defined serves as a metaphor for the other metonymic words defining it). Language expands infinitely in both vertical directions. However, the problem of tropological regress is more specific. It occurs when there is a displacement of affect from one trope to another or when a metonym becomes a metaphor and



265

thus regulates other metonyms. Affective investment is here shifted from one privileged term to another term that takes its place. This is not to say that tropological regress is inherent only in the debate over enhancement technologies. Instead, it is present wherever there is a deeply felt desire to attain a sense of definitional clarity necessary for a form of world making. This can range from answering the question of “what does love mean?” to debates over the role care for the environment should play in public policy making. Each is predicated on the necessity of precision in definitional intent, be it the concept of love or the environment, and in each instance the affective charge around the metaphors in question is displaced onto one or more metonyms (“never having to say you’re sorry” or “mother nature”). When pressed for yet more precision, the regression continues, and those newly formed metaphors are replaced with a new set of metonyms that take their place as metaphoric investments. Thus, tropological regress can be a useful tool for understanding the often-incommensurable sides to many public policy discussions occurring in this country, since its attention to the rhetorical nature of the language being used can provide insight into the reasons for the stalemate.

In the context of bioethics, the trope of “the human” presides as the prevailing metaphor that serves to organize subsidiary metonyms linked to the concept of essence. The task of the bioethicist is therefore to disen-tangle the metaphoric conglomeration of “the human” into its component, metonymic parts. However, it is impossible to represent those metonymic connections outside of the process of symbolization; in other words, any attempt to define the essential qualities of the human simply displaces the privileged, metaphorical trope onto another concept. Since all speech is by nature tropological, attempts to trace the metaphoric condensation around the trope of “the human” simply elevate its component metonymic connec-tions to metaphors in and of themselves. Each is made up of yet another set of metonymic connections in an infinite regression of tropological symbol-ism. To demonstrate this process, I analyze texts that attempt to define “the human” from both bioethical positions.

the conservative position: what is naturally human?I begin by analyzing the conservative position as laid out in Leon Kass’s foundational text on the relationship between enhancement technology and humanity, “Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Human Improvement.” Since the crux of the conservative position rests on the


kurt zemlicka

266

idea that enhancement technologies threaten to impinge on what it is that makes us human, Kass expends a considerable amount of time and effort defining the ontological status of the human species. He begins his argu-ment with a series of questions that set up his objection. He first asks, “What is disquieting about our attempts to improve upon human nature, or even our own particular instance of it?” (2003). His attempt to answer this question leads to a moment of frustration: “It is difficult to put this disquiet into words,” he confesses, because “we are in an area where initial repug-nances are hard to translate into sound moral arguments” (2003). Yet that is his task. He acknowledges that he is attempting to describe something that is blatantly figural due to its somatic nature (repugnance) by translating it into something literal and logical (sound moral argument).

He answers his question: “If there is a case to be made against [enhance-ment technology] we sense that it may have something to do with what is natural, or what is humanly dignified, or what is the attitude that is properly respectful of what is naturally and dignifiedly human” (2003). It is here that the shift from the metaphor of “the human” to its component metonymic connections begins to take place. To clarify what he means by “natural” and “humanly dignified,” Kass indicates that these concepts revolve around three “human goods”: “modesty and humility, about what we know and can do to ourselves,” “the meaning of aging and the human lifecycle,” and “the nature of human activity and human flourishing, and the importance of exercising the first and seeking the second through fitting means” (2003). Kass subsequently outlines his objective: to prove that these three “human goods” possess an intrinsic value that would be diminished with the imple-mentation of enhancement technologies:

[Only] if there is something inherently good or dignified about the ways in which we engage the world as . . . seekers of our own special excellence and flourishing in whatever arena to which we are called—only then can we begin to see why those aspects of our nature need to defended. . . . We must move from the hubris-tic attitude of the powerful designer to look [at] the proposed improvements as they impinge upon the nature of the one being improved. (2003)

Kass proceeds to unpack the three “human goods,” attempting to explain both how each is good in and of itself and how enhancement technology threatens to disrupt their functioning in the human ontological makeup.



267

Kass’s attempt to isolate the ontological status of the human is constantly deferred; “natural” becomes “humanly dignified,” which becomes “human goods” (consisting of three parts), which becomes “some-thing inherently good or dignified about the ways in which we engage the world,” which becomes “excellence and flourishing,” which once again returns to “nature.” Despite his best efforts, Kass remains caught in tro-pological regress; he isolates the metaphor of “the human” as an entangle-ment of metonymic connections and then turns those connections into their own subsequent metaphoric entanglements. His attempts to assign authoritative meaning through argument seem doomed to be undermined by the way in which he makes those arguments—his text keeps short-circuiting itself.

the posthumanist position: humanity has the right to evolveWhereas the conservative position seeks to formulate a definition of “the human” that stems from a set of natural essences, the posthumanist position relies on a much simpler, yet no less problematic assumption: “the human” is a living organism that, like all other living organisms, has been “actively involved in enhancement.” We have been “passive or at least unwitting par-ticipants in an evolutionary process” and thus seek to evolve new and better physical and mental capacities (Harris 2007, 15). In his book, Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People, John Harris lays out this position:

This “progress of evolution” is unlikely now to be achieved acci-dentally or by letting nature take its course. If illness and poverty are indeed to become rare misfortunes, this is unlikely to occur by chance, even with the thousands of centuries . . . evolution requires. It may be that a nudge or two is needed: nudges that will start the process . . . of replacing natural selection with deliberate selection, Darwinian evolution with “enhancement evolution.” (2007, 11)

The posthumanist position grants no special status to “the human” vis-à-vis other species and does not attempt to identify a natural essence of human-ity that would differentiate humans from other species. The overarching goal of humans as a species, as with the members of other species, is to enhance themselves collectively, the only difference between the human


kurt zemlicka

268

species and other species being, according to Harris, that we have “both the wisdom and the necessity of intervening in what has been called the natural lottery of life, to improve things by taking control of evolution and our future development to the point, and indeed beyond the point, where we humans will have changed, perhaps into a new and certainly into a bet-ter species altogether” (2007, 4–5). This approach, however, succumbs to the same tropological regress of the conservative position, but instead of turn-ing metonyms like “flourishing,” “natural humanity,” and “human goods” into sites of nested artificial investment, posthumanists latch onto the con-cepts of progress and choice.

As part of his justification for our ethical responsibility to enhance ourselves, Harris frames the development of enhancement technologies as an inevitable part of evolutionary progression: “If we wish humankind to achieve its potential (which has so far almost universally been assumed to be an inevitable part of evolutionary progress),” he writes, “this might require some deliberate changes” (2007, 11–12). Here the metaphor of “the human” is broken down into “achieving potential” and embracing the “inevitable part of evolutionary progress” that demands change. Thus a linkage is made between the achievement of human potential and acceptance of the inevitability of progress. Just as with the conservative position, the ontological grounding of humanity in the posthumanist account is theorized through vague concepts that serve as the basis of ethical obligations.

Furthermore, Harris links the notion of inevitable progress to a notion of choice. He argues that since humans are a product of evolutionary progress, it is indefensible to think our “particular sort of being is not only worth preserving in perpetuity . . . but to make sure that neither natural selection nor deliberate choice permit the development of any better sort of being” (2007, 16). The con-cepts of progress and choice are thus disarticulated from the metaphor of “the human” in much the same way the good is disarticulated from “the human” in the conservative position and then elevated to their own metaphoric status as sites of significant rhetorical investment. Just as with Kass’s conception of human nature and human goods, progress and choice are imbued with a series of artificial, metonymic linkages. For posthumanists, progress is portrayed as both inevitable and as an a priori good, and choice is framed as the inalienable right of us humans to alter and enhance our world in order to “make us better at doing some of the things we want to do,” make us “stronger, more compe-tent, more of everything we want to be.” In addition, “enhancements will also



269

make us less: less the slaves to illness, pain, disability, and premature death” (Harris 2007, 2), with the end result being that we “could build, or rather cultivate, [our world] into something that has greater value than a daydream” (Bostrom 2008).

The debate between conservative and posthumanist bioethicists is therefore enmeshed in an antinomy in which the concepts of human nature, human goods and flourishing vie with progress and choice, with no way to compare the opposing metaphors. What is needed is a recon-ceptualization of the bioethical project, one that provides a more robust understanding of the artificial processes inherent in the tropological regress that defines the state of much of the field. Such a reconceptu-alization requires “enhancing” the Lacanian theory of symbolization to account for the allure of engaging in tropological regress in order to mobilize collective affinities around the displacement of “the human” for other metaphorical investments.

metaphor as a vehicle for artificial transcendenceRecall that for Lundberg the role of metaphor in the tropological econ-omy of speech is to regulate “the interaction of other signs or represen-tational elements” (2009, 389). Thus the regulatory element of metaphor serves to designate specific sites of significant investment in the formation of what he terms a “collective identity.” In this case, those identities can be understood as the two ideological camps within the bioethical debate over enhancement technologies. To provide an account of this collective identity, Lundberg draws on a notion of public that “is both a tropologically orga-nized practice of affinity that coheres around specific texts, and an identity metaphor that frames reading practices within an economy of tropes, to a certain extent prefiguring the effects produced by a public’s attention to the text” (2009, 389). In his examination of the film The Passion of the Christ, Lundberg argues that the use of metaphor and metonymy “activates a core component of evangelical public affinities. Though in the register of emo-tional experience, the violence of The Passion repulses evangelical viewers, it inspires affective investment in an evangelical identity organized around a metaphor of victimhood,” and those affective investments are character-ized as “the set of forces, investments, logics, relations, and practices of subjectivization that are the conditions of possibility for emotion” (2009, 289) However, in order to understand how metaphor mobilizes affective


kurt zemlicka

270

investment, particularly in a context where two different camps formulate two incommensurable investments around the same metaphor (in this case, “the human”), we need a more robust understanding of the role of affect in investment, one that provides an account of its relationship to metaphor condensation.

Because the process of signification is dynamic in that signifiers con-stantly slip within a signifying chain, it is affect that ends up ground-ing its movement: “It names the inner displacement of the signifier, its misalignment with itself. We become estranged from our . . . thoughts because the signifier . . . can move in a new direction” (Copjec 2006, 95). Thus affect represents an element of signification that is logically prior to the symbolization process—it provides the impetus to attempt to signify the real and is the element that is left behind as signifiers slide along the chain of signification. The affective investments that Lundberg characterizes as being mobilized through metaphor can be understood as occupying the gaps left in signification, the effects produced by the rela-tions of various signifiers in their tendency to shift within a tropological economy. In this sense, affect is what causes the subject to try to continu-ally signify, even if the signifying chain constantly slips. Summarizing Brian Massumi’s view of affect, Lone Bertelsen and Andrew Murphie explain that “affect is precisely a matter of how intensities come together, move each other, and transform and translate under or beyond meaning, semantics, fixed systems, cognitions. Part of the assumption here is that . . . nothing happens if affective intensity has not already paid us a visit” (2010, 147).

However, instead of focusing on the ontological implications of affect that Massumi explores, I want to examine the empirical effects that affect has on the signifying process. Lawrence Grossberg charac-terizes this distinction by arguing that “the Nietzschean space, like the Deleuzian space, of affect, is an ontological space and the psychoanalytic space is an empirical space” (2010a, 311). He likens this distinction to the one Spinoza draws between affectus and affectio, stating that affectio “is ontological (which is Massumi’s interest: “Affect is the ability to have affects and be affected”) and that affectus is “some subset of forms of effectivity . . . which I think is what Freud is doing in his earliest writ-ings” (2010a 311–12). Nesting affectus in empirical reality, he argues that this dimension of affect “refers to the multiplicity of regimes, logics, or organizations of intensities or passions . . . which define the affective



271

tonalities and modalities of existence, behavior, and experience. . . . It is the production of the fact of identification” (2010b, 194). This framework allows one to ascertain the production of identification in a given context and thus provides a means by which to examine affect as a production of effects in specific social formations. Using this framework, I specifically want to look at how affect relates to language and to our drive to attempt to signify an external, objective reality that our processes of signification cannot equate to.

In relation to signification, affect is always tied to a notion of invest-ment because it facilitates the movement of speech. In Seminar VII, Lacan explains that “[Freud] always insists on [affects’] conventional and arti-ficial character, on their character not as signifiers but as signals. . . . This character also explains their displaceable significance, and, from the economic point of view, presents a certain number of necessities, such as irreducibility” (1992, 102). Emphasizing that affect is always a signal, or a prompt for signification, and that it is always artificial in nature is criti-cal because it indicates that in order to produce a sense of consistency within a dynamic tropological economy, an element of artificial invest-ment is required, for that is how signals are linked to signifiers. Thus when an affective investment is made around a particular metaphor, a signal is linked to a signifier and that signifier is at the same time linked to a concept metonymically—in other words, Lacan locates affect as the force that compels the subject to speak, and in turn, formulate a notion of collective identity around the effects of various tropes along the sig-nifying chain that comprises a given tropological economy. This artificial investment, furthermore, has a second step: the act of presenting the signifying chain as stable.

Deleuze’s understanding of discourse as an assemblage of various mechanical processes provides an explanation of how specific sites of rhetorical investment create a unified understanding of collective iden-tity. My aim is therefore to provide a Deleuzian account of this process, one that pays attention to these sites of investment, and thereby dem-onstrate how artifice is required to both create a sense of wholeness or affinity and how that artifice serves to reify the origins of those affinities as given or transcendent. Deleuze, along with Felix Guattari, delineates a process whereby systems of world making follow a series of mechani-cal stratifications from a plane of pure immanence to an assemblage. Two categories are formed, one of “expression” that “constitutes indexes,


kurt zemlicka

272

icons, or symbols that enter regimes or semiotic systems” and one of “content” that “constitutes bodies, things, or objects that enter physical systems, organisms, and organizations” (1987, 143). This process entails a reduction in complexity, whereby a specific set of possibilities becomes actualized while others remain dormant. Affective investment around a metaphor can therefore be understood as a process whereby events in the world enter into an abstract machine and then an assemblage, and their complexity is reduced, unity is enforced, and a collective identity is derived. The allure of metaphoric condensation is therefore explained as an attempt to portray the trope as a (impossible) total capture of an affective signal, or rather, as a complete formation of a stable identity and representation of a given signified.

For Deleuze and Guattari, this process is organized around the cou-pling of a “regime of signs,” or a “specific formalization of expression [con-stituting] a semiotic system,” with a “passional machine.” In this coupling, “there is no longer a signifier-signified relation, but a subject of enunciation issuing from the point of subjectification and a subject of the statement in a determinable relation to the first subject” (1987, 111, 127). In the context of a specific metaphor, the regime of signs represents the given tropological economy (O) in which the metaphor (MR) is nested, and the passional machine (PM) is the process by which an affective signal and a signifier (s) are incompletely and artificially transformed into a signified trope.2 Thus we can infer the following schema for the relationship of metaphor, metonymy (MN) and the affective signal to the regime of signs and the passional machine:

(s) + AFX

O + PM

f MR

f MN ... f MN’



273

Mirroring Lacan’s “L Schema” (1993, 14), which was designed to explain the “interruption of full speech between the subject and the Other,” or language and “its detour through the two egos . . . and their imaginary relations,” this schema represents the interruption of the complete capture of both an affective signal and the signifier to which it is temporarily linked. The line between the passional machine and language to the signifier plus affective signal is interrupted by relationship between the two tropes: a pre-vailing metaphor and the constituent metonyms it regulates. This high-lights the fact that signification is always reduced to trope. Furthermore, the relationship between the prevailing metaphor and the signified plus affective signal is marked by a dashed line to indicate that the relationship between the trope and its object plus affect is always incomplete—there is never a total capture of the affective signal, just as the slippage of the sign means there is never a direct representation of a signifier by a signified. Therefore, in order to complete the process, the metaphor is then presented as stable, as a complete capture of the affective signal that serves as a moor-ing post for investment. In other words, the dashed line is presented as direct representation via artifice—it can be understood as a site for rhe-torical investment. Instead of presenting itself as a contingent and arbitrary linkage between a regime of signs and a passional machine, the metaphor conceals its artificial nature as a transcendental articulation of a complete affective signal plus signifier.

This concealment of artifice is exemplified in the bioethics debate over enhancement through the use of the metaphor of “human dignity.” While much effort has been made to explore how enhancement technology ham-pers our ability to live a dignified life, the term itself remains frustratingly ambiguous.3 Yet it serves as the site of affective investment for both the con-servative and posthumanist viewpoints, and exploring how it presents itself as a transcendent, complete capture of the affective signals relating essential components of humanity serves as an entry point to conceptualizing a way past the current stalemate in the field.

the conservative position: dignity as physiology and psychologyKass deploys the notion of dignity as transcendent through his views on the relationship between ontology and human biology. Specifically, he indicates that the ontological structure of humanity is governed by its physiologi-cal makeup. The majority of arguments in conservative bioethical thought


kurt zemlicka

274

are mobilized around the idea that enhancement technologies threaten to somehow impinge on the ability of humans to live a dignified life. Kass is no exception. His use of the term makes two things clear: dignity is a fundamentally ontological question, and the notion of dignity is inexorably tied to the concept of human biology.

The first argument advanced by Kass relates to what he calls the “giftedness” of life. “What is wrong with biotechnological efforts at enhancement and re-creating ourselves,” he says, “is what [Michael Sandel] calls ‘hyper-agency, a Promethean aspiration to remake nature including human nature, to serve our purposes and to satisfy our desires.’ The root of the difficulty seems to be both cognitive and moral: the failure properly to appreciate and respect the ‘giftedness’ of the world” (2003).4 Kass defines the word “given” by reference to the field of mathematics, where it means “something ‘granted,’ definitely fixed and specified” (2003). At this point in the argument there is already tension between the literal and figural com-ponents in Kass’s language. The passional machine channels an affective signal with the term “given” to mean something that is “definitely fixed and specified,” but to describe the world as “given” is self-contradicting. Kass is attempting to define the world as “fixed and specified,” but he does so by using a metaphor that already creates a disconnect between the thing being described and its description. By describing the world as “given” he suc-cumbs to a signifying chain that constantly defers the true meaning of an object, displacing it onto a metaphor which itself displaces it onto another referent. The literal meaning of Kass’s text may be that the world is “fixed and specified,” but his figural language constantly contradicts that assump-tion. Yet the term “given” carries weight for him because it is presented as a transcendental referent. In arguing that humanity has a “given quality,” the way Kass attempts capture the affective signal is to bind it to the notion that human biology is worth preserving. In order to give this argument meta-physical weight, he articulates a notion of humanity that is transcendent—“givenness” implies that the ontology of humanity lies outside of the process of signification and therefore outside of the realm of deliberative discourse.

Kass proceeds to proffer a conception of the “giftedness” of life that implicitly ties biology with ontology. He writes, “Most of the given bestow-als of nature have their given species-specified natures: they are each and all of a given sort. We need more than generalized appreciation for nature’s gifts. We need a particular regard and respect for the special gift that is our own given nature” (2003). Here the concept of a “given nature” is species specific. Therefore the “giftedness” of life relates firmly to the notion of our



275

biological makeup. It is our genetic code and the physiological makeup of our brains that produce our physical and psychological systems. It is our biology that constitutes our ontological grounding. By turning to our biological makeup, Kass again points to something that falls outside of the realm of signification, a transcendental understanding of dignity that is not subject to refutation.

Having argued that life possesses a quality that is best expressed as “given,” Kass next attempts to articulate what exactly is being “given.” He argues that it is the imperfect and limited mental and physiological struc-tures of human body that represent humanity’s “given nature.” For Kass, “the pursuit of perfect bodies and further life-extension will deflect us from realizing more fully the aspirations to which our lives naturally point, from living well rather than merely staying alive” (2003). Kass indicates that it is an acceptance of our own limited physical and mental capacities that defines us as human. However, the tropological nature of his language again undercuts its literal meaning. By attempting to define the ontological grounding of humanity (its “given nature”), he is simply deferring the ques-tion of meaning by referring to another set of metaphors that themselves have no central meaning. Being “mindful of time’s limits” or navigating between the “transcending longings of the soul” and the “limited capacities” of our minds and bodies provide no more definite meaning to the essence of our humanity than “human dignity,” “human goods” or “flourishing.” In each instance, Kass attempts to give concrete meaning to a concept through the use of metaphor and metonymy, but the effort only manages to advance the signifying chain yet another step in an endless progression of empty signifiers. Yet his argument carries weight because it channels an affective investment through a passional machine that is familiar to a certain public, namely, the concept that life is given by a giver (God) (unstated, but well within the particular regime of signs for a religiously invested discourse) who, while never explicitly mentioned, is assumed to operate with motives that fall outside of the realm of signification. Linking dignity with given-ness and in turn presenting that givenness as transcendent, Kass utilizes the metaphor of “dignified life” to draw on affective signals that do not need to be articulated to resonate with a specific, religiously invested public. This move is predicated solely on leaving the metonymic connections regulated by the metaphor unspecified, and in effect, Kass is able to frame dignity as closing off tropological regress. All this is accomplished by posing the met-aphor as a stable, complete capture of an affective signal and then present-ing that capture as referring to a transcendent notion of human essence.


kurt zemlicka

276

the posthumanist position: dignity as progressNick Bostrom offers a different conception of dignity that allows for the pursuit of enhancement technologies. Instead of portraying dignity as being intrinsic to humanity, Bostrom offers a notion of dignity as a quality that is expressed through human action; dignity on his account is “a thick moral concept” that “contains both descriptive and evaluative components, and may not be in any simple way reducible to more basic moral predi-cates” (2008). Like Kass, Bostrom presents dignity as a quality as a way out of tropological regress by leaving its metonymic connections (or moral predicates) unspecified. Bostrom argues that technologies that function as “enhancements of mental energy that would make us more capable of independent initiative” (2008). He suggests that “to more effectively self-regulate our consumption of food, exercise, and sleep” would all heighten our dignity as a quality “in fairly direct and obvious ways” (2008). Instead of drawing on a notion of transcendence that is linked with the given/giver view of life, Bostrom relies on a notion of progress and efficiency as his transcendental notion of the “good.” Regulating consumption and sleep and increasing mental energy for increased periods of focused thought are presented as being intrinsically beneficial for society. Here Bostrom pres-ents the concept of dignity as a quality as totally capturing an affective signal that relates the progress and advancement of mental and physical capacity to human essence. Coupled with this notion of progress as tran-scendent is the concept of choice, as Bostrom argues “that the act of vol-untary, deliberate enhancement adds to the dignity of the resulting trait, compared to possessing the same trait by mere default” (2008). By focusing affective investment around the notions of choice and progress, Bostrom is able to present the metaphor of dignity as encouraging the development of enhancement technologies, and, just as with Kass, he does so by conceal-ing its artificial nature—presenting dignity as the stopping point of tropo-logical regress by indicating that it refers to transcendental signals that fall outside of signification. Bostrom is drawing on additional signifiers within a different regime of signs—namely, scientific discourse that preaches the importance of progress to achieving perfection.5

conclusionUltimately, the enhancement debate suffers from its inability to account for its own tropological nature. But this problem is not unique to bioethics;



277

it is endemic of any system of thought that attempts to assign a central, definitive meaning to what is naturally human. According to Kass, “Richer bioethics will always begin by trying to clarify the human good and aspects of our given humanity that are rightly dear to us, and that biotechnology may serve or threaten” (2003). Given this description of the field, perhaps the bioethical endeavor is something that cannot fulfill its own objective. Confined, as we all are, within a linguistic system that is essentially figural and that, despite our best efforts, always undermines any attempt to delin-eate concrete meaning, the bioethicist is faced with the impossible task of attempting to provide a literal translation for one of the most unabashedly tropological concepts of all: human ontology.

Therefore we need to change the way we think about bioethics. By challenging the linkages between the words we use and the material-ity they signify, we can articulate a concept of judgment that does not accept claims of human ontology solely on the grounds that they refer to what is materially “true.” Under the old paradigm, bioethicists will always enter into a race to transcendence, attempting to isolate particu-lar metaphors as closing off tropological regress by concealing the met-onyms whose links to concepts they regulate. If the task of bioethics is to clarify “aspects of our given humanity that are rightly dear to us,” it cannot do so under the assumption that we are determined by a given biology or an inevitable progression of advancement because that leads to the establishment of an ethical system that is either blindly reaction-ary or wholly permissive with respect to new enhancement technologies. What if the question of what it means to be human is an answer in and of itself ? Thus, in examining what is best for humanity, the answer is always contingent and artificial. As I have attempted to demonstrate, a perspective on the issue that is attuned to the rhetorical investments inherent in the debate over enhancement technologies exposes the incommensurable definitions of “the human” intrinsic to both sides. If we hope to move past this deadlock and receive any benefit from these technologies, we must find ground for a pragmatic compromise—a ground that, at its core, is rhetorical in nature.

Communication StudiesUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill


kurt zemlicka

278

notes1. Levin adds, “While taboos may have less force in public argument policy mak-

ing, and the arguments crafted to replace them will still appeal to many people whose own souls have not lost the ability to feel an inarticulable awe. They, too, understand the absolute (and quite reasonable) need for arguments. But they will find the conservative argument especially attractive, if it is properly formulated and expressed” (2003, 64–65).

2. The regime of signs here represents a reconfiguration of Lacan’s other, or the linguistic field, here understood as being inherently contextual, in that the field is deter-mined by a specific discourse that enables specific linguistic elements to be utilized.

3. See the President’s Council on Bioethics 2008. This collection of essays revolves entirely around the question of dignity within the bioethical debate. While nearly all of the conservative bioethicists in this volume agree that dignity is crucial when considering bioethical issues, none can agree on a specific definition. However, they all tend to agree that human dignity is “egalitarian” in that it is “possessed” by every member of the species.

4. See Sandel 2002: “To acknowledge the giftedness of life is to recognize that our talents and powers are not wholly our own doing, nor even fully ours, despite the efforts we expend to develop and to exercise them. It is also to recognize that not everything in the world is open to any use we may desire or devise. An appreciation of the giftedness of life constrains the Promethean project and conduces to a certain humility. It is, in part, a religious sensibility. But its resonance reaches beyond religion.”

5. For an analysis on the rhetoric of perfection in the biotechnology debate, see Hyde 2010, 211–42.

works citedBertelsen, Lone, and Andrew Murphie. 2010. “An Ethics of Everyday Infinities and

Power: Felix Guattari and the Refrain.” In The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, 138–158. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Bostrom, Nick. 2008. “Dignity and Enhancement.” In Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President’s Council on Bioethics, ed. President’s Council on Bioethics. bioethics.georgetown.edu/pcbe/reports/human_dignity/chapter8.html.

Bush, George W. 2001. Executive Order 13237.Copjec, Joan. 2006. “May ’68, the Emotional Month.” In Lacan: The Silent Partners, ed.

Slavoj Žižek, 90–114. London: Verso.Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Grossberg, Lawrence. 2010a. “Affect’s Future: Rediscovering the Virtual in the Actual,

an Interview by Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg.” In The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, 309–38. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

———. 2010b. Cultural Studies in the Future Tense. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.



279

Harris, John. 2007. Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hyde, Michael J. 2010. Perfection: Coming to Terms with Being Human. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.

Kass, Leon R. 2003. “Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Human Improvement.” bioethics.georgetown.edu/pcbe/background/kasspaper.html.

Lacan, Jacques. 1992. Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Dennis Porter. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. New York: Norton.

———. 1993. Seminar III: The Psychoses. Trans. Russell Grigg. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. London: Routledge.

———. 2006. Ecrits. Ed. Bruce Fink. New York: Norton.Levin, Yuval. 2003. “The Paradox of Conservative Bioethics.” New Atlantis 1 (Spring):

53–65.Lundberg, Christian. 2009. “Enjoying God’s Death: The Passion of the Christ and the

Practices of an Evangelical Public.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 95 (4): 387–411.———. 2012. Lacan in Public: Psychoanalysis and the Science of Rhetoric. Tuscaloosa:

University of Alabama Press.Macklin, Ruth. 2006. “The New Conservatives in Bioethics: Who Are They and What Do

They Seek?” Hastings Center Report 36 (1): 34–43.President’s Council on Bioethics. 2003. Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of

Happiness. bioethics.georgetown.edu/pcbe/reports/beyondtherapy/index.html.———. 2008. Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President’s Council

on Bioethics. bioethics.georgetown.edu/pcbe/reports/human_dignity/index.html.Sandel, Michael. 2002. “What’s Wrong with Enhancement.” bioethics.georgetown.edu/

pcbe/background/sandelpaper.html.


The Rhetoric of Enhancing the Human: Examining the Tropes of “the Human” and “Dignity” in...

Documents

Transcript of The Rhetoric of Enhancing the Human: Examining the Tropes of “the Human” and “Dignity” in...