Author:
Prof. Anna Gotlib | Brooklyn College CUNY | United States
More than two years into the pandemic, to say that we are all trying to re-orient ourselves somewhere between "the before'' and "the after" is, I think, not an overstatement. As Ami Harbin has argued, we are disoriented and displaced, with our sense of agency as teachers, scholars, and persons if not in peril, then certainly on shakier ground. We yearn for our world to not only be physically safer, but to be more morally intelligible. Indeed, in this late-pandemic twilight, we seek to be more morally intelligible ourselves. What I want to ask now is how feminist bioethics might move through, undertand, and address this particular historical moment when so much of what seemed settled, hoped-for, or taken for granted no longer holds--or at least does not hold very reliably. Specifically, I want to ask what we, as feminist bioethicists, might have to say about the realities of living with--not post--individual and collective trauma; how we might redefine solidarity and care in deeply ableist, often inhumane, conditions where the toxic positivity of a return "to normal" is neither possible, nor preferable, for so many; and finally, how feminist bioethics can amplify its voices as public philosophy and biomedical discourse within moral and professional spaces "in which," as Adrienne Rich told us, "our names do not appear."