Leonardo’s Choice: Genetic Technologies and Animals is an edited collection of twelve essays and one dialogue focusing on the profound affect the use of animals in biotechnology is having on both humans and other species. Communicating crucial understandings of the integrated nature of the human and non-human world, these essays, unlike the majority of discussions of biotechnology, take seriously the impact of these technologies on animals themselves. This collection’s central questions revolve around the disassociation Western ideas of creative freedom have from the impacts those ideas and practices have on the non-human world.
Communicating crucial understandings of the integrated nature of the human and non-human world, these essays, unlike the majority of discussions of biotechnology, take seriously the impact of these technologies on animals themselves. This collection’s central questions revolve around the disassociation Western ideas of creative freedom have from the impacts those ideas and practices have on the non-human world.
Dr. Steven Best writes:
We are quickly morphing into a new biological and social existence that is ever-more mediated and shaped by computers, mass media, and biotechnology, all driven by the logic of capital. In this global context, biotechnology and genetic sciences are no longer merely interpretations of the natural and social worlds, rather they have become active forces in changing them and the very nature of life in a “second Genesis.” Exploiting more nonhuman animals than ever before, technoscience portends cloning and genetic modification of humans as well. In light of the dangers and potentially deadly consequences of this project, I maintain that the positive potential of science can be realized only in a new context of cultivating new sensibilities toward nonhuman animals and nature, engaging in ethical and political debate, and participating in political struggles over biotechnology and its effects.
This transdisciplinary collection includes perspectives from the disciplines of philosophy, cultural theory, art and literary theory, history and theory of science, environmental studies, law, landscape architecture, history, and geography. Included authors span three continents and four countries.
Included essays contribute significantly to a growing scholarship surrounding “the question of the animal” emanating from philosophical, cultural and activist discourses. Its authors’ are at the forefront of the growing number of theorists and practioners across the disciplines concerned with the impact of new technologies on the more-than-human world.
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Dr. Steven Best is NIO’s Senior Editor of Total Liberation. Associate professor of philosophy at UTEP, award-winning writer, noted speaker, public intellectual, and seasoned activist, Dr. Best engages the issues of the day such as animal rights, ecological crisis, biotechnology, liberation politics, terrorism, mass media, globalization, and capitalist domination. Best has published 10 books, over 100 articles and reviews, spoken in over a dozen countries, interviewed with media throughout the world, appeared in numerous documentaries, and was voted by VegNews as one of the nations “25 Most Fascinating Vegetarians.” He has come under fire for his uncompromising advocacy of “total liberation” (humans, animals, and the earth) and has been banned from the UK for the power of his thoughts. From the US to Norway, from Sweden to France, from Germany to South Africa, Best shows what philosophy means in a world in crisis.
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Thanks so much for mentioning Leonardo’s Choice: Genetic Technologies and Animals. As Editor of the book, I urge everyone to take a look and consider new technological uses of animals as an even more persistent and overwhelming trajectory that may, in fact, enforce irreparably the status of animals as inferior and existing solely for our use. I see this as a fourth and, perhaps, catastrophic moment in the centuries-long shift from our understanding of our communion and solidarity with the non-human, ensouled world to a world in which we see ourselves as the creators of all life.
Again thanks for posting, Camille.
carol