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Confiscating Live Body Parts

Cécile Fabre

in Whose Body is it Anyway?: Justice and the Integrity of the Person

This chapter argues that the duty of assistance includes a duty to make some of one’s body parts available, before death, to those who need them. It claims that however demanding such duty may seem ... More

This chapter argues that the duty of assistance includes a duty to make some of one’s body parts available, before death, to those who need them. It claims that however demanding such duty may seem at first sight, it can be delineated in such a way as to preserve the interest of the healthy in living a minimally flourishing life.Less

Words for Parts of the Body

Asifa Majid

in Words and the Mind: How words capture human experience

This chapter addresses the question of whether there are “basic” body parts that are recognized across cultures, in how people talk about the body. Or to put it another way, how do people from ... More

This chapter addresses the question of whether there are “basic” body parts that are recognized across cultures, in how people talk about the body. Or to put it another way, how do people from different communities come to conceptualize the body in the languages they speak? It focuses on a particular semantic component: the reference of body part terms; that is, what the exact extension of body part terms is across languages; how similar or different are the categorization systems? This is but one component of this semantic domain. According to Kemmerer and Tranel, additional components include information about the spatial organization of body parts, their characteristic functions, and their typical cultural associations. Although there are differences between languages in characteristic functions or cultural associations of body parts, many have predicted universals in body part categorization. The chapter argues that there is considerably more variation in the naming of body parts than is acknowledged, but that this variation is constrained.Less

Evolutionary Novelties: The Origin of Homologs

Günter P. Wagner

in Homology, Genes, and Evolutionary Innovation

This chapter examines the evolutionary processes that led to the origin of body parts, with particular emphasis on the concept of “novelties.” It first considers the distinction between the evolution ... More

This chapter examines the evolutionary processes that led to the origin of body parts, with particular emphasis on the concept of “novelties.” It first considers the distinction between the evolution of adaptations and the origin of novelties, and more specifically innovations, before proposing a perspective of what evolutionary novelties are. To this end, a definition of morphological novelty is given, followed by a discussion of phenomenological modes for the origin of Type I novelties such as the differentiation of repeated elements. The chapter also describes how natural selection creates character individuality and concludes with an analysis of modularity, functional specialization, and robustness and canalization.Less

Life = Body Plus X

Paul U. Unschuld

in What Is Medicine?: Western and Eastern Approaches to Healing

This chapter focuses on the human body and examines a commonly used name for the invisible something, the spirit or soul, denoted by X. It is assumed that the body cannot live without a soul and the ... More

This chapter focuses on the human body and examines a commonly used name for the invisible something, the spirit or soul, denoted by X. It is assumed that the body cannot live without a soul and the soulless body exists only as a dead body. An endeavor to explain certain functions of the body, and with that to explain certain human behaviors, leads to the assumption of invisible, intangible, but nevertheless real parts of the living body. The names for X are adapted to their context of interpretation, sometimes religious, sometimes secular. Certain conventions can impress themselves in a cultural context. The ethereal and astral parts of the body are differentiations of X. The idea emerged that a body and its X could seem totally normal or healthy to the naïve observer, but still be classified by experts as sick or abnormal. Even in very early times, there was a differentiation between illness of the tangible, visible body and illness of X, the intangible, invisible spirit.Less

Collecting Pathology: Fragmentation and the Traffic in Morbid Flesh

Samuel J. M. M. Alberti

in Morbid Curiosities: Medical Museums in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Chapter 3 begins with the point of origin of the anatomical specimen, that is, the death and dissection of the ‘patient’. Thus fragmented, body parts followed complex paths—harvested from hospital ... More

Chapter 3 begins with the point of origin of the anatomical specimen, that is, the death and dissection of the ‘patient’. Thus fragmented, body parts followed complex paths—harvested from hospital wards, given to a prestigious institution, or once again fragmented at auction. Human remains acquired new meanings associated with collectors and practitioners as they were exchanged. We find here that the process of objectification, rendering the human body material culture, begins as a conceptual act even before the death of the patient. Each of the different modes of acquisition that brought objects into medical collections: gifts, auctions and other sales, exchanges, and, especially, the generation of preparations from the ‘raw material’ of patients in hospital wards are accounted for.Less

Introduction

Anne Phillips

in Our Bodies, Whose Property?

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book considers what, if anything, is the difference between markets in sex or reproduction or human body parts and the ... More

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book considers what, if anything, is the difference between markets in sex or reproduction or human body parts and the other markets we commonly applaud. What—if anything—makes the body special? It argues that some things should not be for sale, and that it is not transparently obvious either why this is so or which these are. It considers not just markets and the body, but also the implications and consequences of thinking of the body as something that we own. It examines cases of body commodification, focusing on commercial surrogacy and markets in body parts. It also considers instances where thinking of the body as property has no obvious implications in terms of making it available for sale. This book addresses, therefore, two distinct though related questions. What, if anything, is wrong with thinking of oneself as the owner of one's body? What, if anything, is wrong with making our bodies available for rent or sale?Less

An Integrative Map of the Body

Michael S. A. Graziano

in The Intelligent Movement Machine: An Ethological Perspective on the Primate Motor System

This chapter begins by discussing the question of whether the musculature of the hand is controlled in a decomposed or in an integrated manner in the primary motor cortex. It then discusses ... More

This chapter begins by discussing the question of whether the musculature of the hand is controlled in a decomposed or in an integrated manner in the primary motor cortex. It then discusses integration among other body-part representations, and how this integration may develop through experience with complex actions.Less

Consent With Inducements: The Case of Body Parts and Services

Janet Radcliffe Richards

in The Ethics of Consent: Theory and Practice

This chapter examines the bearing of financial inducements on consent, focusing on the issue of selling kidneys for transplantation. How can it be considered unethical to sell kidneys if it is ... More

This chapter examines the bearing of financial inducements on consent, focusing on the issue of selling kidneys for transplantation. How can it be considered unethical to sell kidneys if it is ethical to donate them? It is argued that concerns about the validity of consent to sell kidneys cannot withstand critical scrutiny.Less

Trois Contes

Mary Orr

in Flaubert: Writing the Masculine

In this chapter, Trois Contes (TC) uncovers the contradictions of the interpersonal within political, legal, or religious frames. It undertakes a new reading which investigates the morality of TC not ... More

In this chapter, Trois Contes (TC) uncovers the contradictions of the interpersonal within political, legal, or religious frames. It undertakes a new reading which investigates the morality of TC not through the religious or ethical, but through its anthropological strata. It looks at the three male body-parts which signify ‘life’ in order to investigate the public conscience of man, not his subconscious.Less

Subjecting the Body

Mira Balberg

in Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature

The second chapter explores how the rabbis perceived of the human body as a material entity and how they imagined its physical function in the contraction and transmission of impurity. The chapter ... More

The second chapter explores how the rabbis perceived of the human body as a material entity and how they imagined its physical function in the contraction and transmission of impurity. The chapter focuses on their construction of the body as a fluid and modular entity whose boundaries are in constant flux. The chapter shows that the rabbis divide the body into different areas in such way that areas that are less consequential to the subject and that one does not strongly identify with oneself (such as interior or invisible parts) are not susceptible to impurity. Thereby, the rabbis create a unique paradigm of a bodily self, in which the body is identical to the self only insofar as the body is invested with subjectivity.Less

The Body in Space: Visual Dynamics in Graeco-Roman Healing Pilgrimage

Alexia Petsalis-Diomidis

in Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity: Seeing the Gods

This chapter presents a vivid analysis of the experience of the healing pilgrim in the Roman Empire. The focus is the Asklepieion at Pergamum that offers evidence of several types: architectural ... More

This chapter presents a vivid analysis of the experience of the healing pilgrim in the Roman Empire. The focus is the Asklepieion at Pergamum that offers evidence of several types: architectural evidence, i.e. the layout of the shrine; art-historical evidence, i.e. dedications of body-parts; epigraphic evidence, i.e. the illuminating Sacred Law from Pergamum prescribing ritual practice for visitors; and literary evidence, especially Aelius Aristides' Sacred Tales. From this evidence, it reconstructs an impression of the pilgrim's experience characterised by a tension between the control and order of communal ritual and the individual's experience of his illness and his encounter with the deity.Less

Legal paradigms of human tissues

Remigius N. Nwabueze

in Human Tissue Research: A European perspective on the ethical and legal challenges

This chapter suggests that the legal status of human tissues is still evolving. The question of whether a human tissue deserves protection or what legal category underpins that protection often ... More

This chapter suggests that the legal status of human tissues is still evolving. The question of whether a human tissue deserves protection or what legal category underpins that protection often depends on one or more paradigms generally applied towards the analysis of human tissues. Accordingly, the chapter sets out to identify and explore the tripodic frameworks which usually animate the analysis of human tissues. It suggests a trend towards a more inclusive use of all analytical models, in contrast to the monolithic approach inspired by the no-property rule.Less

Diachronic stories of body-part nouns in some language families of South America

Roberto Zariquiey

in Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective

The present chapter deals with some well-attested diachronic developments of body-part nouns in languages belonging to a sample of language families of South America. Body-part nouns in these ... More

The present chapter deals with some well-attested diachronic developments of body-part nouns in languages belonging to a sample of language families of South America. Body-part nouns in these languages are often implicated in the development of locative adpositions, classifiers of different sorts, and body-part prefixes (as described for Panoan languages). This chapter argues that it is possible to postulate at least four different source constructions for these developments, including incorporated nouns, derivative compounds, generic genitives, and locative compounds. As shown in this chapter, there is an intrinsic relation between these constructions and body-part nouns, and this fact, in addition to the special cognitive nature of body-part expressions, may explain why these nouns undergo the grammaticalization processes described here. Due to its widespread distribution, the recruitment of body-part nouns for the development of grammatical elements such as adpositions, classifiers, and prefixes might be considered an areal feature of South American languages.Less

Fantastic Detached Body Parts

in Ambiguous Bodies: Reading the Grotesque in Japanese Setsuwa Tales

This chapter examines setsuwa tales about detached parts that either act independently from the body or are otherwise fantastic in a severed state. The analysis of three setsuwa suggests that ... More

This chapter examines setsuwa tales about detached parts that either act independently from the body or are otherwise fantastic in a severed state. The analysis of three setsuwa suggests that fantastic detached body parts are sites of tension between conflicting desires and ideologies. The chapter explains that the tales are positioned to undermine people in the highest positions of authority and highlight the vulnerability and loss of the protagonists.Less

Some key body parts and polysemy: A case study from Koromu (Kesawai)

Carol Priestley

in The Semantics of Nouns

This chapter discusses body part nouns, a part of language that is central to human life, and the polysemy that arises in connection with them. Examples from everyday speech and narrative in various ... More

This chapter discusses body part nouns, a part of language that is central to human life, and the polysemy that arises in connection with them. Examples from everyday speech and narrative in various contexts are examined in a Papuan language called Koromu and semantic characteristics of body part nouns in other studies are also considered. Semantic templates are developed for nouns that represent highly visible body parts: for example, wapi ‘hands/arms’, ehi ‘feet/legs’, and their related parts. Culture-specific explications are expressed in a natural metalanguage that can be translated into Koromu to avoid the cultural bias inherent in using other languages and to reveal both distinctive semantic components and similarities to cross-linguistic examples.Less

Beyond the vagina-clitoris debate: From naming the genitals to reclaiming the woman’s body

in Sex and Desire in Hong Kong

This study brings into the open Hong Kong women's suppressed and hidden articulation of their feelings about their sexual body parts. By tracing the heavily regulated and always difficult process by ... More

This study brings into the open Hong Kong women's suppressed and hidden articulation of their feelings about their sexual body parts. By tracing the heavily regulated and always difficult process by which they came into contact with and related themselves to their sexual body parts, it examines how women were made to develop a sense of self-alienation towards their own bodies, and yet how some of them managed to put up their resistance against such a ‘forced’ dissociation. It also challenges the assumed superiority of using medico-anatomical language to prescribe ‘proper’ names for sexual parts, as they are found to possess a high degree of indeterminacy as sites of arousal and pleasure, and subject to the nature of encounters and relational contexts.Less

The Discursive Construction of Sex: Remaking and Reclaiming the Gendered Body in Talk about Genitals among Trans Men

Lal Zimman

in Queer Excursions: Retheorizing Binaries in Language, Gender, and Sexuality

The division between biological sex and social gender is critical in much of feminist theory as well as in discourses about gender that circulate in transgender communities. This chapter investigates ... More

The division between biological sex and social gender is critical in much of feminist theory as well as in discourses about gender that circulate in transgender communities. This chapter investigates the role of body part terminology in the discursive construction of biological sex through a lexical analysis of interaction in an online community for transgender men. Members of the community under study in this chapter tease apart conventional definitions of genital terminology that collapse the body parts themselves from the gender categories with which they are associated in ways that allow them to use both canonically female and canonically male terminology (e.g., vagina and cock) in reference to the same individual. Ultimately, these discourses challenge the naturalization of sex. They instead suggest support for the poststructuralist notion that the gendered meanings attached to the body are themselves contingent on discourse.Less