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Document Details : Title: Method of Avoidance or Exercise in Retrieval? Subtitle: A Lacanian Assessment of Bioethics Discourse Author(s): ZWART, Hub Journal: Ethical Perspectives Volume: 25 Issue: 4 Date: 2018 Pages: 753-793 DOI: 10.2143/EP.25.4.3285713 Abstract : Half a century ago, bioethics emerged as an academic discipline with a recognisable vocabulary and methodology of its own. And important objective of professional bioethics was to determine and define a limited set of legitimate bioethical signifiers. Key terms such as ‘risk’, ‘harm’, ‘human rights’, ‘autonomy’, ‘self-determination’, ‘privacy’ and ‘consensus’ became acknowledged components of the lingua franca of bioethical expertise. The rise of bioethical discourse constituted a success story, but incited discontent as well. The objective of this article is to analyse and assess bioethical discourse in a systematic manner, building on the work of Jacques Lacan, notably his theorem of the four discourses. Bioethics will be assessed as an instance of ‘university discourse’, devoted to developing a terminological grid, allowing experts to domesticate moral dilemmas. Discontent is seen as symptomatic, as pointing out that something has been lost and forgotten, something which is difficult to articulate in the standardised vocabularies of bioethical discourse. This requires a shift toward a different type of discourse: the discourse of the analyst, following the discursive flow with evenly-poised attention. Rather than on bioethical quandaries as such, the focus is on the vicissitudes (the emergence, specification and elimination) of bioethical signifiers: on the controversies concerning the language in which these quandaries are to be addressed. |
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