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The Genetic Subject Reconsidered: An Argument for a First-Person Approach to Patients with Huntington's Disease
- Flaherty, Devin
- Advisor(s): Browner, Carole
Abstract
Recent work in the anthropology of moralities has evidenced two divergent notions of the "subject". One takes the subject, or "self" to be a locus of experience, emotion, and action. The other takes the subject to be a product of contemporary regimes of truth and the occupant of various subject positions which determine her ethical and existential possibilities. These positions can be identified as a "first-person, humanist" and "poststructural" approach respectively. In this essay, I argue that although poststructural approaches can be useful, more attention to a first-person, humanist approach is warranted. Through case studies of patients in the United States recently diagnosed with Huntington's disease, I demonstrate that the particularities of each individual's first-person perspective are extremely relevant to an account of their moral experience. I contrast this approach to the poststructural account of the "genetic subject," a theoretical framework which disables an examination of these individual particularities.
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