The Genetics of Law and Literature: What is Man?

Research output: Chapter/Conference proceedingChapterAcademic

Abstract

‘Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law’, says Article 6 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the right to fair trial. The article guarantees the right to silence, the right not to incriminate oneself. At the same time, technological developments such as the possibility of DNA testing help law to have the body talk and use genetic information in forensic settings in an effort to solve crimes. In one sense, technological developments drastically augment the possibilities of, and the perspectives on law. The question that becomes acute then is how law itself is affected by modern technology. With the presumption of innocence as a genetic building block of criminal law in our legal tradition based on Enlightenment concepts and values, we must ask whether the genetics of law are under pressure. Can, does or should law keep pace with the acceleration of biotechnical innovations, or have we by now reached the edges of the juridical as we know it? I aim to address this question by means of a reading of Michel Houellebecq’s novel Atomised (orig. Les Particules élémentaires), and also ask in what sense the technological ‘decomposition’ of the body forces us to rethink both the idea of the legal fiction of the subject and the humanities as instruments of self-exploration: What is Man?
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationBioethics and Biolaw through Literature
EditorsD. Carpi
Place of PublicationBerlin
PublisherDe Gruyter
Pages23-67
Number of pages45
ISBN (Print)9783110252842
Publication statusPublished - 2011

Research programs

  • SAI 2010-01 RRL
  • SAI 2010-01.IV RRL sub 4

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