Person and Poiesis in Technology and Law: Questioning Builds a Way

Chapter 12 examines the relation between biotechnology, law and literature. Following Ricoeur’s distinction between ipse selfhood, i.e. the way in which one perceives oneself in the course of a lifetime’s development, and idem selfhood, the term denoting the way in which the other perceives me, e.g. that I am thought of as a legal subject when the situation is legal, or how my fingerprints or DNA make me uniquely me, it considers questions of identity and selfhood, and what makes us human. It does so by offering two readings of Michel Houellebecq’s novel Atomised (The Elementary Particles), and Heidegger’s view on technology in relation to poièsis as “making” something. It then asks after the effects of technology on (legal) personhood and narrative identity when technology is employed instrumentally without sensitivity to its darker side effects such as loss of privacy, freedom, or individuality.