Embryos, Unborns and Other Species. A Choreography of the Limits of Human Life

Abstract

In this article we draw upon the theoretical baggage of posthumanism as toolkit to inquire about the processes that configure the limits of human life. To do so we focus in three dimensions that, according to our analysis, are delineating the boundary which settles the initiation of human life as such: the first dimension will consider the morphological aspects, the second the temporal ones and the third the spatial aspects. The first one, morphological, will answer the question about the proper human form, the second will refer to when does that human life start, and the third will consider the where

takes place that initiation. To track down how those three axes operate we analyse various materials, mostly legal texts and images. We try, therefore, to pursue a whole array of heterogeneous actors -both human and non-human-, practices, discourses and relations that facilitate the emergence of the properly "human" as such. As this complex array of elements tends to be erased from the narrative on the origins of human life, "humanness" comes to be read as a given, something unmediated and a-problematic.