What annie thinks about @ 4am

Since Noble’s note on Hiroshima, there has been little consideration for other cultures and their approaches to technology. Kudos to Paul Wolpe for pointing out the differences in ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ approaches to technology.

Yet, only a small portion of the Wolpe’s article mentions “Sushi Science”, and it seems his questioning of ethics remains somewhat, in a narrow and restricted.

The article begins with an interesting discussion on pomo culture and the ethics of genetic science. However, it’s a shame Wolpe doesn’t expand on the differences of cultures and the questioning of a ‘self-identity’ in a postcolonial context. Instead, Wolpe uses what seems to be staple to ethicists in this discourse: the Diaspora and victimization of Jews. Though the examples of Diaspora, the embodied self, and Eugenics illustrate the tensions of cultural construction and biological determinism, in a pomo-poco setting, these are issues that are experience on a global level.

In one of his essays, Said’s speaks of the immigrant experience as an “exile’, that is having a ‘house’ but no ‘home’. Though Wolpe mentions the import/export setting of a pomo world, is not a cultural identity crisis experienced by any Canadian with a hyphenated identity? Under the title, “Jews in Diaspora”, for the sake of postcolonialism, lets appropriate Wolpe’s opening sentence to the following:

insert any Canadian hyphenated identity here] struggle to live in some dynamic tension between the expectations of society and the expectations of being [insert any ‘race’ here]”.

As for the issue of Jews and Eugenics, I’m surprise Wolpe departs from the “Negroes”, as not equally a victim of eugenics. Though not with the same tone as Hitler, the physiognomic rhetoric of the “other body” nonetheless justified racism and the torment of Africans during the slave trade.

I’m criticizing Wolpe not because I don’t think he’s wrong (I really liked the article). Ethicists that use the holocaust or the ‘jew example’ need to reflect it back to the world, and not as a point in history. As Athena points out in her article, the risk of seeing the holocaust as a stand-alone example makes invisible the ‘language of eugenics’ (another facet of biopolitics) occurring on a global scale, just as Wolpe’s negates the racism against Africans.