Katarzyna Beilin - Ethics of Life: Contemporary Iberian Debates

Ethics of Life: Contemporary Iberian Debates

HISPANIC ISSUES VOLUME 42

Ethics of Life: Contemporary Iberian Debates

Katarzyna Beilin and William Viestenz

EDITORS

Vanderbilt University Press

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

2016

2016 Vanderbilt University Press

All rights reserved

First Edition 2016

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Manufactured in the United States of America

The editors gratefully acknowledge assistance from the College of Liberal Arts and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota; and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa

The complete list of volumes in the Hispanic Issues series begins on .

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file

LC control number 2015042855

LC classification number GE42 .E8445 2015

Dewey class number 179/.10946dc23

Full record available at lccn.loc.gov/2015042855

ISBN 978-0-8265-2091-3 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-8265-2092-0 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-8265-2093-7 (ebook)

HISPANIC ISSUES

Nicholas Spadaccini, Editor-in-Chief

Luis Martn-Estudillo, Managing Editor

Ana Forcinito, Associate Managing Editor

Nelsy Echvez-Solano, Megan Corbin, and William Viestenz, Associate Editors

Cortney Benjamin, Scott Ehrenburg, Heather Mawhiney, and Pablo Rodrguez Balbontn Assistant Editors

*Advisory Board/Editorial Board

Rolena Adorno (Yale University)

Romn de la Campa (Unversity of Pennsylvania)

David Castillo (University at Buffalo)

Jaime Concha (University of California, San Diego)

Tom Conley (Harvard University)

William Egginton (Johns Hopkins University)

Brad Epps (University of Cambridge)

David W. Foster (Arizona State University)

Edward Friedman (Vanderbilt University)

Wlad Godzich (University of California, Santa Cruz)

Antonio Gmez L-Quiones (Dartmouth College)

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Stanford University)

*Carol A. Klee (University of Minnesota)

Germn Labrador Mndez (Princeton University)

Eukene Lacarra Lanz (Universidad del Pas Vasco)

Tom Lewis (University of Iowa)

Jorge Lozano (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

Ral Marrero-Fente (University of Minnesota)

Kelly McDonough (University of Texas at Austin)

Walter D. Mignolo (Duke University)

*Louise Mirrer (The New-York Historical Society)

Mabel Moraa (Washington University in St. Louis)

Alberto Moreiras (Texas A & M University)

Bradley Nelson (Concordia University, Montreal)

Michael Nerlich (Universit Blaise Pascal)

*Francisco Ocampo (University of Minnesota)

Antonio Ramos-Gascn (University of Minnesota)

Jenaro Talens (Universitat de Valncia)

Miguel Tamen (Universidade de Lisboa)

Teresa Vilars (Texas A & M University)

Iris M. Zavala (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)

Santos Zunzunegui (Universidad del Pas Vasco)

Contents

Katarzyna Beilin and William Viestenz

Carmen Flys-Junquera and Tonia Raquejo

John H. Trevathan

Eugenia Afinogunova

Katarzyna Olga Beilin

Matthew Feinberg and Susan Larson

Luis I. Prdanos

Pablo de Lora

Paul Begin

Sainath Suryanarayanan and Katarzyna Olga Beilin

Daniel Ares Lpez

William Viestenz

John Beusterien

Sebastiaan Faber

Martn Lpez-Vega and Luis Martn-Estudillo

Introduction

Ethics of Life: Contemporary Iberian Debates

Katarzyna Olga Beilin and William Viestenz

Among all the factors which have emerged with increasing visibility in the twenty-first century that contribute to changes in the definition of life and open new questions about its ethical treatment, the following are the most important for this volume: the raising of collective consciousness regarding ecological crises and especially climate change; the emerging biotechnologies of plant, animal, and human life enhancement developed in part as an answer to this crisis; and the consideration of nonhuman species as deserving of rights, which is possibly a resistance to the growing industrialization of agricultural practices. As these are debated in the context of present and future policy development, the historical archive is also revised as bioeconomy reconsiders the worth and the purpose of life. In the neoliberal economic framework, life becomes not only a means but also a material of production and is integrated into the market exchange processes driven by new biotechnologies. Todays multifaceted crisis, happening simultaneously in ecological, political, and economic contexts, intensifies the alliance between science and economy, which claim to be able to maintain and enhance present quality of life through innovations focused on integrating all life, including intellectual life, into the market exchange. The need for financial profit motivates and manipulates the mission of research at the university and the notion of common good. In this framework, the humanities are expected to form public opinion in favor of scientific innovations of life. In the best tradition of cultural studies, however, this volume proposes to question rather than praise the relation between life and these new hegemonic discourses.

This volume focuses on the transformations in the understanding of the ethics of life resulting from the debates in the contexts of ecological crisis, biotechnological innovations and animal rights movement activism on the Iberian Peninsula. Methodologically, the articles in the volume will present interdisciplinary perspectives from the humanities, law, social sciences, and sciences in relation to existing debates and research, as well as the widely understood world of art: film, novels, and poetry. We propose to think about these changes in a way that connects them, as forms of resistance, to dominating discourses of economy and nation. We believe that changes in culture occur through a buildup of connections between diverse frames of new social movements, whether they are resisting or attempting to transform the status quo. But, we also want to honestly present disagreements and contradictions between philosophers, movements, and perspectives in order to provide food for thought about these so-timely matters to our prospective readers. We also hope that this volume may open new perspectives for Iberian cultural studies, which are immersed in a ferment of debates just as the essays of this volume are being conceived and written.

This Volume and the Field

Federico Garca Lorca (1932) famously argued that the Castillian and Andalusian duende that feeds off of Spains intimate relationship with death and is best represented in bullfighting, is superior to the Galician angel and Catalan muse while Spanish art as such is superior to the traditions of Germany, Italy, and others. Jos Bergamn, a friend of Lorcas and one of the greatest propagators of bullfighting, in his exile in Mexico founded an editorial house, Sneca, and a journal, Espaa peregrina, becoming an intermediary between the world of Spanish literature and American Hispanism. Another key figure providing foundations for the discourses of Hispanism was Amrico Castro. In his influential lecture at Princeton University in 1940, Castro did not mention bullfighting, but similarly to Lorca and Bergamn, suggested that Spanish culture, due to its focus on questions of life and death, can offer a solution to the crisis of Western modernity excessively dominated by material questions. This idea of a violence-ridden spirituality has been repeated by various Hispanists during the twentieth century and still can be heard today. In the first chapter of