Biología humana, biomedicina y alteridad

The “Other” as a symbolic product, as a cultural construction of our social mind, is present in all societies and throughout human history, but its forms of production have acquired peculiar characteristics in modern and “postmodern” times. According to French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, we no longer just “eat,” “devour,” or “seek” the “Other,” as we did in older times with our enemies, settlers, or with our “objects of desire”; we no longer just face the “Other,” compete with him, love him or hate him, but we create, produce, and invent him in a systematic way. Human biology and biomedicine are not excluded from this process: the biological determinism that has been characterizing and shaping life sciences and medical science has contributed to the technical and scientific production of the ways of conceiving the Other and producing identities through the naturalization and decontextualization of certain conceptions of human life and the “other”.

Sánchez Arteaga, Juanma & Garcia; Ventura, Laia. (2015). Biología humana, biomedicina y alteridad. En Naturalistas en debate. Ruíz de la Torre Cervantes, Emilio (Ed.). Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científica. Anejos Arbo