Reply to Wilkinson

In his review of my book Whose Body is It Anyway, Wilkinson criticises the view (which I defend) that confiscating live body parts for the sake of the needy is (under some circumstances) a requirement of justice. Wilkinson makes the following three points: (a) the confiscation thesis is problematic on its own terms; (b) there is a way to justify coercive resource transfers without being committed to it; (c) the thesis rests on a highly questionable approach to the status of the body. Wilkinson’s paper is challenging, and some of his points are well taken. On the whole, however, it does not constitute an insurmountable challenge for my thesis.

Margaret Cavendish's Epistemology

This paper provides a systematic reconstruction of Cavendish's general epistemology and a characterization of the fundamental role of that theory in her natural philosophy. After reviewing the outlines of her natural philosophy, I describe her treatment of ‘exterior knowledge’, i.e. of perception in general and of sense perception in particular. I then describe her treatment of ‘interior knowledge’, i.e. of self-knowledge and ‘conception’. I conclude by drawing out some implications of this reconstruction for our developing understanding of Cavendish's natural philosophy.     

Margaret Atwood and Assisted Reproduction: From Fantasy to Reality

ABSTRACT

This article raises the bewildering impact of artificial reproduction techniques (ART) for analysts, for the family, for the couple, and for their children. It explores a number of concerns, some of which include: the dissociation of sex from reproduction; the relative absence of the usual time limits that people have traditionally taken into consideration to conceive; questions about generation and age; the risk of perceiving oneself as omnipotent; the need to renovate the story of how one came to be; the impact of ART on the way the primal scene and the Oedipal complex are worked through when there is no longer only a triangle, but more people involved in procreation; the children’s identity (Who are my real parents?) and the impact on the identity of the women involved in participating in the procreation such as the egg donor or surrogate. It also addresses the impact of ART on the analyst who has to deal with situations for which he or she is not prepared either personally or professionally. It begins by exploring Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, and its present day relevance to ART. Atwood’s vision was prescient. The similarity between the lives and experiences of her Handmaids and that of today’s commercial surrogates in India is often striking. It also presents some ways in which literature and media are predicting the challenges that ART will bring in the future. It explores how what was fiction a few decades ago has become reality and how what we presently think of as fiction will perhaps be a reality in the not-so-distant future. The second part of the article presents a clinical vignette in which a couple presents with infertility in the wife, whose infertility was the consequence of chemotherapy treatment she received as a young adult. She decided to look for a donor in a European country and succeeded at getting pregnant. However, though successful, the pregnancy proved to be extremely difficult. When a second pregnancy was desired, the same donor provided with her ova. To avoid the complications of the first pregnancies, the couple accepted the wife’s sister’s offer to carry the pregnancy. Their daughters are now two and four years old.