How Canadian Philosophy Plays a Vital Role in the Project of Eugenics: Or, Gender, Schafer, and Other Nondisabled White Male Bioethicists

I’m always disappointed when I see Canadian feminist philosophers contribute to and reproduce the significant role that philosophy in Canada and Canadian bioethicists in particular play in the legacy of eugenics in Canada and the exclusion of disabled philosophers and philosophy of disability that this legacy requires and sustains. Given the systemic and structural character […]

Quote of the Week (and It’s Only Thursday): Conscientious Objections, Bioethics, and MAiD

This week’s quote-of-the-week post (though it’s only Thursday) sheds light on how the relatively recent deployment in bioethics of the term conscientious objection enables (neo)liberal eugenic goals. As a philosopher whose thinking has been formatively influenced by Foucault, my philosophical motivations derive in large part from a desire to problematize (in Foucault’s sense) what is […]

Philosophy, Bioethics, and Dirty Hands

In my previous post, I noted that one philosopher in attendance at my Syracuse presentation claimed that I had confused the causal relation between bioethics (and bioethicists) and the popularity and normalization of prenatal testing and screening. As I noted, furthermore, my interlocutor pointed out to me (in a somewhat patronizing fashion) that prospective parents […]

Bioethics and the Reproduction of Power

During the question period following my presentation at Syracuse University, one interlocutor asserted that I had confused the direction of causation between prenatal testing and bioethics. Prospective parents, he said, do not, as he understood me to suggest, avail themselves of prenatal testing because bioethicists tell them to do so. Rather, the technology has developed, […]

Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain Interviews C Dalrymple-Fraser

Hello, I’m Shelley Tremain and I’d like to welcome you to the one hundred and fourth installment of Dialogues on Disability, the series of interviews that I’m conducting with disabled philosophers and post to BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY on the third Wednesday of each month. The series is designed to provide a public venue for discussion with […]

Disability through Continental Frameworks: Lessons for Bioethics, Lecture by Melinda Hall, Hybrid, Jun., 23, 2023

When: June 23, from 2.00 pm until 3.30 pm (CET) Where: Live in Antwerp: Antwerp University, room S.R.012 (Rodestraat 14), city campusAttendance is free, no registration necessary. Online: If you want to attend online, enroll by sending an email to emma.moormann@uantwerpen.be. You will receive the link to the event shortly before the lecture. Abstract:Melinda Hall will discuss the import of […]

Toward an Abolitionist Genealogy of Bioethics

In recent years, philosophers have increasingly engaged with each other in passionate discussions about academic freedom in the discipline of philosophy and academia more widely, as well as participated in heated debates with members of the broader public about freedom of speech in society generally. The topics around which the most impassioned discussions and debates […]

MAiD in Canada and How To Educate Yourselves About It

At the end of the month, I will speak to the Carnegie Mellon/Pitt M.A.P group about MAiD (euthanasia/medically assisted suicide). My presentation will address (among other things): the role of bioethicists in the production of an eugenic culture in philosophy in general and in Canadian philosophy in particular, drawing out the connections between the current […]

Bioethics (De)Mystified: A Foucauldian Argument For Why Bioethics Must Be Abolished

In “Bioethics as a Technology of Government,” the fifth chapter of Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability, I assert that bioethics emerged as a technology of government to resolve the problem that the production of disability poses for the neoliberal management of societies (Tremain 2017, pp. 159-202). In particular, disability is constituted as a problem […]