<nettime> immaculate conceptions

[Josephine Bosma <jesis@xs4all.nl>]

Keywords: genetic science, life science, gender issues.

This is an interview made with Gerburg Treusch-Dieter made at V2
organisation in Rotterdam December 19th 1999. It is only a brief
introduction to her work, but in the light of christmas celebrations
coming up for all of us it seemed a good moment to contemplate on
the eerie overlap between old and new immaculate conceptions.
V2 received some minor protests against this topic or theme for the
last Wiretap of the year. Gerburg Treusch-Dieter is a sociologist,
and she works at both the Freie Universitaet Berlin and the
University of Vienna. She also teaches genderstudies, plus she has "a
history" in the womens' movement (as she calls it: the second or
'new' womens' movement.) The interview was roughly translated from
German.

JB: What kind of theory are you referring to when you say you try
to try to connect all fields you work in? Considering we are here at
V2, would that be mediatheory?

Gerburg Treusch-Dieter: It would be cultural sociology. I do involve
the media. Not so much in this specialisation which is the computer.
The computer is an end stadium on the one hand, and on the other hand
it is a new fase of *possibilities* in communication. We'll have to
see what happens with that. To me media are means, that connect or
devide us. In Latin *media* also means public. The problem is whether
we will remain in our own forms of public life, our own creations, or
whether we, well, 'freak out virtually' and loose the earth beneath our
feet.

JB: Is this what you were talking about here at V2, this concern that
we are loosing control over developments in genetic science etc?

GTD: Hannah Ahrend said: "In moments of fear one maybe thinks clearest."
So danger would be necessary to think clearly. I would say that in
modern history there has not been enough clear thinking. Hannah Ahrend
knew what she was talking about. In her case of course it concerns
national socialism/nazism. We are about to forget this history. My
concern is with the political implications connected to these
technologies. I think that information technology and biotechnology,
eventhough they are only just beginning, continue the creation of
(what Hannah Ahrend called in relation to centration camps) "the
superfluousness of humans". What happened in the middle of the twentieth
century cannot simply be wiped off the table. It has fundamentally
changed our relationship to what we can call (or want to or have to
call,) human. The question of the feminine, the female is an important
factor to consider at the core of these issues. I say that the
technical replacement of the female which has become possible through
reproduction technologies is a requirement for genetic technology.
It is a requirement in the sense that whatever is genetically altered
is then given the possibility to actually reproduce. I think that
reproduction technology has a starting point which is not completely
understood yet in terms of its effects. This is the fact that the
origin of life can be taken from the female body, and it will be taken
from it. From this viewpoint life is lying on the table of capital.
Already now life is sold on a broad scale for practically no money/value.
We are in the fase where everyting that makes us up physically, and what
in principle originates from the feminine (until now birth from women
was absolutely necessary to create a society) will start to come onto
the *market*, and already is on the market.

JB: Can I play the devils' advocate for the moment? As women are more
emancipated, and often do not even want children, do not want to have
a child come from their body, is it in this light still a bad
development?

GTD: That is difficult to answer. I have to point at history again.
When in the history of christianity birth from a woman (and I first
want to look at the figure of Eve) is identical to original sin (which
we drag with us simply because we are desiring physical creatures),
when in such a history the feminine simply is part of damnation, this
does not exclude it does not also have an idealising dimension. One
is not seperable form the other. On the one hand damnation: the
mother of all bad things, Eve. On the other hand the ideal: Mary, the
virgin mother. The woman without sex. Why does she not have a sex?
Because in this christian culture this is under sanction, it is
forbidden, denied, ignored. We cannot see ourselves seperate from
this history. This history has the effect that being female, dealing
with this heritage, has become a great burden for us females. All
womens' movements of this century have fought against the idea of
being birth machines. They have opposed having to deliver a production
of humans for a society that does not even appreciate them, for a
society that does not acknowledge them. In this light I can understand
your question. "Thank god we are rid of that!" And "thank god" then
says it all. We still express relief in terms of the one who has caused
all this trouble in the first place. If we would now start to say
"Thank god we can leave childbirth to technologies: we leave this to
this connection between reproduction technology and genetic technology,
the connection between bio technology ad information technology", if
we would do that, we would only abstractly talk ourselves out of this
history. I completely understand one would want to get rid of this
history. I am also convinced it is impossible to achieve this via these
technologies.
Bring children into the world, communicate with them, lead them into
the world, raise them to politically responsible individuals is an old
program, but in my opinion it is still valid, also in the 21st century.
Because of this I am very sceptical about this alledged freedom. It is
only a freedom *from* something, it is no freedom *for* something. We
as women have to consider this, but not just women. That is the old
shit so to say: women have to consider something again, to be able to
improof what has been delivered by men. We have to discuss this together,
men and women. Gender is totally unimportant in this case. We simply
all have to take more responsibility for a change, instead of saying:
the machines will do it for us. This last thing seems to be the general
attitude at the moment.
About the issue of childwish: again I have to say it belongs in this
same christian history. A woman that has not at least given birth to
a son is not worth much in this world anyway. She only gains value
through a child, a son. The son belongs to the father, the mother is
the figure through which the father realises a son. Through the son,
through a child, a woman gains value. Women let themselves be put on
lists for IVF maybe because they do not see other possibilities to
become pregnant, but I think they also want to give themselves some
value this way. Childwish has been *produced* in my opinion. I know it
sounds opposite to what I say about forming a relationship to
childbirth in the light of bio technology and lifescience, but one
can have a full life as a woman without children. I don't want to
wave the flag and say: come and reproduce yourselves! I think I made
that clear. I think the compulsions are there in both cases. On the
one hand technologies are an effect of the denial of the feminine: it
has to be replaced; secondly the devaluation of the feminine which we
as women have to keep in mind is that we are supposedly only valuable
when we have a child. The christian model is that the child should be
a son, whom then has his place on this earth. When childwish forces
women into clinics this is also because they do not look for other
values, they do not look for other content for life. They do not want
to look for it, but they also cannot look for it. It is not rewarded
in and by society.

JB: You work as a professor. Do you only discuss these issues with
your students, or do you also try to formulate an answer to the
questions these issues create?

GTD: Firstly I try to analyse and show history through constantly
discussing new themes. We discuss bio ethics in the seminars, but
also the question of the *flesh*: what values did and does the flesh
represent? How do we perceive flesh, what kind of repulsion does it
call forward, what horror, what does the wrapping industry mean in
relation to the flesh? Next I also present the theme *addiction*.
I pressume that not in the last place because of our history we have
come into the situation where our relationship to the world produces
necessary, unavoidable addictions. I try to approach those questions
analytically. I try to not reduce them to the relationship between
feminine and masculine. I do always try show the construction and
differences of the sexes. I think that this construction, the way
both men and women are *constructed*, that we are constructed from our
*ideas* of ourselves as sexual beings, that this is fundamental for
all further questions. I just named three: bio ethics, flesh and
addiction, but there are of course more. I then try to also show
this at the level of significations. We are sexually constructed as
men and women, and this means we have to signify ourselves as men
and women. This takes us into a dimension which has influences on
the symbolic, the imaginary, our representation of images, our power
to imagine in relation to the aestetic, etc. Everything will however
take place on the level of *reality*, and this is why I take everything
back to these things: we have to be aware of the basis of reality and
stay politically motivated.
I am against giving a program, I am not a profet. I try to limit myself
analytically to the question of power. How is power constructed through,
with and *over* us.

JB: What does bio ethics mean?

GTD: Bio ethics is the attempt to legitimize all what has started as
reproduction medical science, which has now *technologized* itself,
researching the beginning of life outside of the feminine body. It is
an attempt to legitimize everything which is possible in the field of
genetic or life science: altering DNA structures, transgenic creations,
the influences of genetically altered structures on their surroundings
(in field research and experiments), genetic surgery (cell transplants
based on genetic codes)... foetusses, or foetal cells are used for
this.
The position of Peter Singer is very controversial in this respect
for instance. It is the prototypical position, namely applying a way
of thinking purely based on ideas of usefullness to ethical questions
like: what is good, what is not, what can we do, what can we not do,
where do we apply human rights to create limits to these experiments?
In 1997 a European bio ethics convention has been accepted, for which
the basis was usefullness, which means what is the most profittable way
to use these technologies. The question of what we as individuals
mean in this all... Think of braindeath, which belongs to this issue
as well. Braindeath is the requirement for organ transplants. Doctors
fight nurses on this, nurses fight relatives over this, relatives fight
eachother... when can we declare someone dead? Are we in fact not
killing someone, when we take the organs from this individual? There
have been cases where in the end re-animation turned out to be
possible. It could maybe just be a temporarily situation of our
knowledge to declare people dead at a certain point. If we knew
other ways to re-animate, then it would not have been possible
to declare this person dead. Then it would be murder to take the
organs from this persons' body. These are all border questions that
are debated in bio ethics, but are always decided on in favor of
usefullness. There are worldwide lists for organ transplants, it is
a very profittable bussiness. Peter Singer as an example again would
say that a person who is braindead is a vegetable, a plant, and thus
can no longer be seen as a person. Everything starts to slide,
everything starts to tumble in the light of these questions. One
should concern oneself with bio ethics, as it tries to answer these
questions for us, because the decisions made there are in the end based
on costs/usefullness based thinking. It is an eugenetics ethic, a
genetics that transforms the old eugenetics into a new one.



(Due to limited time, we could not continue our talk. On our way out
Gerburg Treusch-Dieter however replied to my question about what to
think of artists who 'make art' out of genetic science. To her these
artworks represents yet another legitimization of bio technology and
*life science*, as it is now euphemistically called.)




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