Table Of ContentBIOLEGALITIES
Personhood
in the Age of Biolegality
Brave New Law
Edited by
Marc de Leeuw · Sonja van Wichelen
Biolegalities
Series Editors
Marc de Leeuw
Law
University of New South Wales Sydney
Sydney, NSW, Australia
Sonja van Wichelen
Sociology and Social Policy
University of Sydney
Sydney, NSW, Australia
This interdisciplinary series on Biolegalities engages with contempo-
rary challenges and implications of new biotechnologies and biologi-
cal knowledges in the field of law. Our series aims to open up a much
broader understanding of biolegality that includes a range of biotech-
nologies and biological knowledge, expanding into areas of immigra-
tion law, trade law, labor law, environmental law, patent law, family law,
human rights law, and international law. While the growing scholarship
on biopolitics has studied the ways in which such practices are entangled
with certain modes of governance and neoliberal economies, their trans-
lations, deployments, and reconfigurations in the realm of law or legal
practice has been relatively understudied. The main objective of this
book series is to provide a venue for the study of the complex and often
contested ways in which biotechnologies or biological knowledges are
reworked by, with, and against legal knowledge.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15629
Marc de Leeuw · Sonja van Wichelen
Editors
Personhood
in the Age
of Biolegality
Brave New Law
Editors
Marc de Leeuw Sonja van Wichelen
Law Sociology and Social Policy
University of New South Wales Sydney University of Sydney
Sydney, NSW, Australia Sydney, NSW, Australia
Biolegalities
ISBN 978-3-030-27847-2 ISBN 978-3-030-27848-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27848-9
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover credit: imagenavi/Getty Images
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
In memory of Sam, a dear colleague and bright scholar
who left us much too early.
A
cknowledgements
This edited collection is the result of an international workshop Brave
New Law! Legal Personhood in the New Biosciences, which was held
in late August 2018, at the University of Sydney and organized by
the Biopolitics of Science Research Network. The workshop brought
together 33 scholars from around the world to discuss changes in and
transformations of legal personhood considering recent bioscientific
developments. The premise of the workshop was that complex issues
were emerging in the intersection of law and biology, an area of law
that was quickly expanding and displaying highly composite problems
that challenge existing legal regimes. Key questions included: What do
the new biosciences do to our social, cultural, and legal conceptions of
personhood? How does our legal apparatus incorporate new legitima-
tions from the emerging biosciences into their knowledge systems? And
what kind of ethical, socio-political, but also scientific consequences
are attached to the establishment of such new legalities? By bringing
together legal scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, cultural
theorists, and political philosophers, the aim of the workshop was to
examine these problems by looking at materialities, the posthuman, and
the relational in the (un)making of legalities, but also to critically assess
the “newness” of these legalities, and to compare them with earlier inves-
tigations of natural personhood.
Fourteen papers were presented, and fourteen other international
scholars gave generous comments that helped develop the papers
presented in this volume. We would like to thank them here for their
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
insightful papers, considerate reading of participants’ papers, insightful
feedback, and lively discussion: Courtney Addison, Sascha Callaghan,
Margaret Davies, Nadine Ehlers, Jennifer Hamilton, Fleur Johns,
Isabel Karpin, Hannah Landecker, Thomas Lemke, Cressida Limon,
Neil MacLean, Maurizio Meloni, Catherine Mills, Karen O’Connell,
Bronwyn Parry, Shobita Parthasarathy, Vincenzo Pavone, Brad Sherman,
Margrit Shildrick, Halam Stevens, Cameron Stewart, Samuel Taylor-
Alexander, Catherine Trundle, Britta van Beers, Robert Van Krieken,
Miguel Vatter, Ayo Wahlberg, and Catherine Waldby. Our conversations
continued at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Study of
Science which was held a few days later at the Convention Centre in
Sydney and where the editors organized two consecutive panels on legal
personhood and the new biosciences. More thought-provoking papers
were presented in these panels, and we thank Seamus Barker, Shun-Ling
Chen, Myra Cheng, Zsuzsanna Ihar, Jaya Keaney, and Declan Kuch for
their participation. We are very grateful to Torsten Heinemann who
took up the role of discussing these 4S papers. A special thanks to David
Delaney—who was not able to come to the workshop—but who gener-
ously offered and provided a truly engaging afterword to our collection.
The workshop was part of the Biolegality Pop-Up Research Lab, an
initiative from the Sydney Social Science, Humanities, and Arts Research
Centre (SSSHARC) and Sonja would like to thank its director Professor
Nick Enfield for making biolegality a research priority in the faculty
and for generously funding the initiative. Claire Stevens and Zsuzsanna
Ihar were indispensable in successfully preparing the pop-up events
and were essential to making the workshop run smoothly and to lively
(social media) engagements with people in and outside of the workshop.
Sonja would also like to acknowledge the funding she received from
the Australian Research Council for Early Career Researchers (DECRA,
project number DE140100348) which allowed the initial ideas and
writing of this project. She also acknowledges the SOAR scheme at the
University of Sydney which generously allowed her teaching buy out to
work on this project.
Marc would like to thank UNSW Law for supporting the Initiative
for Biolegalities, of which he is the convener, and the financial support for
several symposia between 2015 and 2018 (The “Biological Turn” in Law:
A Critical Appraisal; The Seeds of Law: Monsanto, Patents and the Public
Good; and Natural and Unnatural Threats: Pandemics & the Global
Governance of Health and Biosecurity). He would also like to thank all
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
participants whose talks and debates greatly enhanced his understanding
of what is at stake in the biolegal dynamic. Marc also thanks the newly
created UNSW Allen’s Hub for Technology, Law and Innovation (where
he is research leader for the research stream “Hybrid Life and Legal
Personhood”) for supporting his work.
In preparing the manuscript we would like to thank our editor Rachel
Daniel for taking on this project, for her intellectual commitment to
supporting scholarship from science and technology studies, and for
her meticulous reading of the manuscript. Madison Allums has been
extremely helpful in attending to our questions and last-minute requests.
The research assistance from Pradytia Pertiwi has been exceptional. Sonja
would like to thank her for her keen enthusiasm and meticulous work in
bringing the manuscript to completion.
c
ontents
1 Brave New Law: Personhood in the Age of Biolegality 1
Marc de Leeuw and Sonja van Wichelen
Part I Troubling Persons
2 Spectral Personas: Exploring the Constitution
and Legal Standing of “Virtual Personhood” 21
Bronwyn Parry
3 The Political Economy of Neurolaw: Can Neurolaw
Destabilize the Neoliberal Discourse About Human
Behavior? 39
Delphine Rabet
4 Legal Personhood in Postgenomic Times: Plasticity,
Rights, and Relationality 55
Marc de Leeuw and Sonja van Wichelen
xi
