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Podcast: New Books in Disability Studies
Episode: O. Carter Snead, "What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics" (Harvard UP, 2020)
Description: At first glance, the term “expressive individualism” seems benign enough. After all, people throughout the Western world value their personal freedom and the liberty to make crucial life decisions such as whether to have children and how and when they wish to die. What could possibly be wrong with the idea that everyone should be in control of his or her own body and fate to the greatest extent possible and with the least intrusion by either the state or “outdated” social mores?But there is a dark side to expressive individualism when one enters the realm of publi...