J. Paul Narkunas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280308
- eISBN:
- 9780823281534
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280308.003.0009
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel Never Let Me Go follows a group of genetic clones who are created as wards of the British health service because they serve a utilitarian function: They are manufactured ...
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Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel Never Let Me Go follows a group of genetic clones who are created as wards of the British health service because they serve a utilitarian function: They are manufactured for the purpose of having their vital organs harvested until their death. The world he envisions of a grouping of humans reproduced to be a living warehouse of organs while certainly dreadful is nowhere near as horrific as when organ transplantation and global uneven development intersect in our neoliberal present. Ishiguro shows how humans who view their humanity instrumentally expedite a world that is ready to slice them into shares, monetizing all the parts along the way. Through Ishiguro’s text, I diagnose the reification of the body as an aggregation of fungible body parts. Human reification challenges bioethicists and cultural critics alike to reflect on how human dignity and bodily integrity no longer serve as barriers for marking the species-limit due to new advances in biotechnology.Less
Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel Never Let Me Go follows a group of genetic clones who are created as wards of the British health service because they serve a utilitarian function: They are manufactured for the purpose of having their vital organs harvested until their death. The world he envisions of a grouping of humans reproduced to be a living warehouse of organs while certainly dreadful is nowhere near as horrific as when organ transplantation and global uneven development intersect in our neoliberal present. Ishiguro shows how humans who view their humanity instrumentally expedite a world that is ready to slice them into shares, monetizing all the parts along the way. Through Ishiguro’s text, I diagnose the reification of the body as an aggregation of fungible body parts. Human reification challenges bioethicists and cultural critics alike to reflect on how human dignity and bodily integrity no longer serve as barriers for marking the species-limit due to new advances in biotechnology.
J. Paul Narkunas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280308
- eISBN:
- 9780823281534
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280308.003.0010
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
The conclusion brings together and extends some general lines of argument within the book. The book closes with several axioms to question the present reification of life and to offer strategies for ...
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The conclusion brings together and extends some general lines of argument within the book. The book closes with several axioms to question the present reification of life and to offer strategies for non-market living, a user’s guide to living ahumanly that marks affinities and points of critique with new ecologies, disability studies, critical race theory, feminism, animal rights scholars, materialists and realists, and object-oriented ontologists.Less
The conclusion brings together and extends some general lines of argument within the book. The book closes with several axioms to question the present reification of life and to offer strategies for non-market living, a user’s guide to living ahumanly that marks affinities and points of critique with new ecologies, disability studies, critical race theory, feminism, animal rights scholars, materialists and realists, and object-oriented ontologists.
John Arena
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677467
- eISBN:
- 9781452948102
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677467.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
In the early 1980s the tenant leaders of New Orleans St. Thomas public housing development and their community activist allies were militant, uncompromising defenders of the city’s public housing ...
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In the early 1980s the tenant leaders of New Orleans St. Thomas public housing development and their community activist allies were militant, uncompromising defenders of the city’s public housing communities. They led sit-ins, spoke out at public hearings, and denounced attempts by developers to seize their homes and disperse their communities. Yet ten years later, the St. Thomas community leaders and their activist allies forged a partnership with the city’s most powerful real estate developer to privatize the development and create a new racially integrated, “mixed-income” community that would drastically reduce the number of affordable apartments. From protesting federal and local government initiatives to scale back public housing, tenant leaders and advisors were now cooperating with a planning effort to privatize and downsize their communities. Arena argues that the insertion of radical public housing leaders and their activist allies into a government and foundation-funded non-profit-complex is key to understanding this unexpected political transformation. The new political allegiances and financial benefits of the non-profit model moved these activists into a strategy of insider-negotiations that prioritized the profit-making agenda of real estate interests above the housing and other material needs of black public housing residents. White developers and the city’s black political elite embraced and cultivated this new found political “realism” because of the legitimation it provided for the regressive policies of poor people removal and massive downsizing of public housing.Less
In the early 1980s the tenant leaders of New Orleans St. Thomas public housing development and their community activist allies were militant, uncompromising defenders of the city’s public housing communities. They led sit-ins, spoke out at public hearings, and denounced attempts by developers to seize their homes and disperse their communities. Yet ten years later, the St. Thomas community leaders and their activist allies forged a partnership with the city’s most powerful real estate developer to privatize the development and create a new racially integrated, “mixed-income” community that would drastically reduce the number of affordable apartments. From protesting federal and local government initiatives to scale back public housing, tenant leaders and advisors were now cooperating with a planning effort to privatize and downsize their communities. Arena argues that the insertion of radical public housing leaders and their activist allies into a government and foundation-funded non-profit-complex is key to understanding this unexpected political transformation. The new political allegiances and financial benefits of the non-profit model moved these activists into a strategy of insider-negotiations that prioritized the profit-making agenda of real estate interests above the housing and other material needs of black public housing residents. White developers and the city’s black political elite embraced and cultivated this new found political “realism” because of the legitimation it provided for the regressive policies of poor people removal and massive downsizing of public housing.
John Arena
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677467
- eISBN:
- 9781452948102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677467.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
Chapter 1 provides a demographic profile of the St. Thomas and the collective efforts residents mounted to address their grievances.
Chapter 1 provides a demographic profile of the St. Thomas and the collective efforts residents mounted to address their grievances.
John Arena
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677467
- eISBN:
- 9781452948102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677467.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
Chapter 2 outlines the expansion, and intertwining, of tourism and gentrification in New Orleans. I then detail and evaluate the effectiveness, in the context of electing the city’s second black ...
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Chapter 2 outlines the expansion, and intertwining, of tourism and gentrification in New Orleans. I then detail and evaluate the effectiveness, in the context of electing the city’s second black mayor, of the insider and outsider political strategies St. Thomas residents and their advisors employed to protect their community from the increasing development pressures they faced.Less
Chapter 2 outlines the expansion, and intertwining, of tourism and gentrification in New Orleans. I then detail and evaluate the effectiveness, in the context of electing the city’s second black mayor, of the insider and outsider political strategies St. Thomas residents and their advisors employed to protect their community from the increasing development pressures they faced.
John Arena
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677467
- eISBN:
- 9781452948102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677467.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
Chapter 3 continues a focus on political strategy by addressing how and why the St. Thomas residents and their advisors undertook a dramatic political reversal by forging a partnership with the ...
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Chapter 3 continues a focus on political strategy by addressing how and why the St. Thomas residents and their advisors undertook a dramatic political reversal by forging a partnership with the city’s most powerful real estate mogul to redevelop their community and surrounding area.Less
Chapter 3 continues a focus on political strategy by addressing how and why the St. Thomas residents and their advisors undertook a dramatic political reversal by forging a partnership with the city’s most powerful real estate mogul to redevelop their community and surrounding area.
John Arena
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677467
- eISBN:
- 9781452948102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677467.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
Chapter 4 analyzes how federal public housing policy was “neoliberalized” in the 1990s, the embrace of “reform” by New Orleans developers and public officials, and how federal initiatives were worked ...
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Chapter 4 analyzes how federal public housing policy was “neoliberalized” in the 1990s, the embrace of “reform” by New Orleans developers and public officials, and how federal initiatives were worked out at the neighborhood level.Less
Chapter 4 analyzes how federal public housing policy was “neoliberalized” in the 1990s, the embrace of “reform” by New Orleans developers and public officials, and how federal initiatives were worked out at the neighborhood level.
John Arena
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677467
- eISBN:
- 9781452948102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677467.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
Chapter 5 chronicles the creation of the final redevelopment plan, the promises broken by developers, the mayor, and housing officials, internal divisions, and the final eviction of the residents. ...
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Chapter 5 chronicles the creation of the final redevelopment plan, the promises broken by developers, the mayor, and housing officials, internal divisions, and the final eviction of the residents. Why, I ask, did tenant leaders and community activists maintain their commitment to the privatization road map, despite the radical departure from earlier promises made to them?Less
Chapter 5 chronicles the creation of the final redevelopment plan, the promises broken by developers, the mayor, and housing officials, internal divisions, and the final eviction of the residents. Why, I ask, did tenant leaders and community activists maintain their commitment to the privatization road map, despite the radical departure from earlier promises made to them?
John Arena
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677467
- eISBN:
- 9781452948102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677467.003.0006
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
Chapter 6 looks at the struggle to defend New Orleans public housing communities, and the role that nonprofits played in undermining those efforts, post-Katrina.
Chapter 6 looks at the struggle to defend New Orleans public housing communities, and the role that nonprofits played in undermining those efforts, post-Katrina.
John Arena
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677467
- eISBN:
- 9781452948102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677467.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
Chapter 7 studies the role that nonprofits played in undermining the efforts of New Orleans public housing communities post-Katrina.
Chapter 7 studies the role that nonprofits played in undermining the efforts of New Orleans public housing communities post-Katrina.
John Arena
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816677467
- eISBN:
- 9781452948102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816677467.003.0008
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
In the conclusion I identify the lessons–the “silver lining”–that the human-made disasters of St. Thomas and Katrina can provide for reigniting a movement for racial and economic justice.
In the conclusion I identify the lessons–the “silver lining”–that the human-made disasters of St. Thomas and Katrina can provide for reigniting a movement for racial and economic justice.
