Gilani2020_Article_BionicBodiesPosthumanViolenceA.pdf (662.12 kB)
Bionic bodies, posthuman violence and the disembodied criminal subject
Version 2 2023-06-12, 09:31
Version 1 2023-06-09, 21:42
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-12, 09:31 authored by Sabrina GilaniSabrina GilaniThis article examines how the so-called disembodied criminal subject is given structure and form through the law of homicide and assault. By analysing how the body is materialised through the criminal law’s enactment of death and injury, this article suggests that the biological positioning of these harms of violence as uncontroversial, natural, and universal conditions of being ‘human’ cannot fully appreciate what makes violence wrongful for us, as embodied entities. Absent a theory of the body, and a consideration of corporeality, the criminal law risks marginalising, or altogether eliding, experiences of violence that do not align with its paradigmatic vision of what bodies can and must do when suffering its effects. Here I consider how the bionic body disrupts the criminal law’s understanding of human violence by being a body that is both organic and inorganic, and capable of experiencing and performing violence in unexpected ways. I propose that a criminal law that is more receptive to the changing, technologically mediated conditions of human existence would be one that takes the corporeal dimensions of violence more seriously and, as an extension of this, adopts an embodied, embedded, and relational understanding of human vulnerability to violence.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Published version
Journal
Law and CritiqueISSN
0957-8536Publisher
SpringerExternal DOI
Volume
32Page range
171-193Department affiliated with
- Law Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2020-09-29First Open Access (FOA) Date
2021-01-18First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2020-09-28Usage metrics
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