is the contrast between its position and that of prohibition countries such as Ireland, Germany and Austria […]” (Beyleveld and Pattinson 2001: 59).
Within the political discussion in Germany, a concentration on issues concerning the concept of human dignity and the Kantian maxim, that as an end in itself humans are required never to treat others merely as a means to an end, seemed and seems to inform discussions about embryo research as well as practices like In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)5 in which the child could be seen as a “remedy” for an illness of its parents (i.e. infertility). At the beginning of this study it seemed to me that in both Germany and the UK, the focus of public and political debate was on the status of the embryo. On the one hand, the [18] embryo was viewed as holding the potential to become a human being and thus able to claim human rights. On the other hand, the embryo was seen as offering the best possible ‘material’ for infertility and stem cell research and its presumed potential feeds the vision of a patient specific medicine.
During the main writing period of the PhD this book is based on a shift took place and members of feminist organizations such as ReproKult in Germany or non-profit activist institutions such as the Corner House in the UK pointed to the situation of women not only with regards to reproductive technologies, but also especially with regards to genetic research. At the time, also on the European level an awareness began to form, which was then expressed in the 2005 decision of the European Parliament not to fund embryonic research that uses up embryos and the call of the United Nations to ban (human) cloning, as a means of preventing the exploitation of women as egg cell donors. This is followed, however, by the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee in the UK issuing a report that explores the idea of differentiating between forms of embryos in order to allow a different assessment of their status, which in turn creates a terminology that can justify the use of embryos that are not to be used for reproduction for research purposes (Select Committee on Science and Technology 2002: Fourth Report). With this report, the committee also responds indirectly and in a disagreeing manner to the call of the United Nation. The report states: “Britain is well placed to be a world leader in human genetics and embryology research and it is crucial that our scientists, in complying with regulatory requirements, are not hampered by bureaucracy” (ibid). This example illustrates that the understanding of how to achieve scientific progress and the relationship of law to this process is quite different in different European countries. The opposite picture that is painted between the UK and Germany on a European level had, in the first instance, influenced my choice for these research sites. However, it has never been my research interest to find details on this contrary positioning or relationship of both sides, but to look at how developments in both countries impact the level of women’s embodied experiences and on theorizing in the field of RGTs and biomedicine. Hence, the conceptual approach of this study is not a traditional comparative one. I took the opposing positioning of the UK and Germany as a starting point, understanding that, at this point in time, any development including new or converging technologies is to ultimately play out on a global level.
[19] 1.1.2 Embedding the Research in Pedagogy
“Critical Revolutionary Pedagogy is Made by Walking”
(McLaren and Jandric 2014: 805).
“When we discussed it at our table, it
wasn't for the world to debate”
(Nash, Lisa quoted in Hendrickson,
Molly. 2017: online source).
The first opening quotation to this section by Professor of Education and Critical Studies, Peter McLaren, and Professor of Informatics, Petar Jandric, bases the making of critical pedagogy on walking. In a future chapter, I will return to walking when emphasizing that “discourse,” in its etymology, means walking (back and forth). In this sense, McLaren and Jandric’s statement describes the development of a discourse of a critical pedagogy as never coming to a standstill but being, at the core of it, based on the ability to create and interrupt meaning and to move back and forth between streams of thoughts, conditions, people, forms of enquiry and so on. Thus, within the framework of critical pedagogy, pedagogy is an on-going active process in scholarship and practice that is sensitive towards examining how education (re-)generates both inequality and injustice, as powers are acting intersectionally (Beck 2005). The following section provides a brief insight into scholarly cornerstones I passed when dis-coursing towards the PhD study this book is based on.
More often than not people I spoke to during the years of this study asked in which discipline I would defend the PhD study. This had also been the case as my “home discipline,” pedagogy, does not exist or is understood very differently in the countries where I shared most collegial conversations during the years of this study. Emphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of the study and understanding that it is written in the years during which the term “postdisciplinarity” was becoming popular and powerful, I regularly responded to questions by explaining how my study was informed and deeply rooted within my training as a social worker and in pedagogy. Given that I received my diploma in pedagogy from the Johann-Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, I was exposed to a fair degree to the work of the Frankfurt School as part of my pedagogical studies. One of the main thoughts I “inherited” from my studies in Frankfurt am Main was that “social inquiry ought to combine rather than separate the poles of philosophy and the social sciences” (Bohman 2005). Max Horkheimer described “human emancipation” as the main goal of work within the interface of philosophy and the social sciences (ibid). Thus, within my theoretical training as a pedagogue the importance and interdependence of philosophy and pedagogy was emphasized.
[20] It was also during my time in Frankfurt am Main that theoretical notions of the Leib re-entered my work, and I understood that “Die Leiblichkeit bildet die Grundlage allen pädagogischen Handelns”6 (Liebau 2013). If so, then understanding Leiblichkeit is the pre-requisite to professional pedagogical agency. However, understanding Leiblichkeit and Leibsein7 (in its entirety) is not possible without an embodied engagement and a sensory exposure, which in turn creates the bases of pedagogical agency. This study, although focusing in on RGTs and biomedical developments, offers a topical entry point to studying Leiblichkeit and to engaging with it in an embodied manner. Additionally, it communicates with numerous studies published in pedagogy that examine influences of RGTs on motherhood, childhood and identity (Colpin 2002, Funcke and Thorn 2010, Malek 2006, Freeman and Golombok 2012, Golombok et al. 1996).
While studying in Frankfurt am Main, I worked full-time as a social worker with trauma-experienced persons, mainly women who had experienced sexual and/or domestic violence and/or displacement. This work informed, from a practice-based background, my interest in the Leib and in aesthetic education as it focuses on the Leib and on “leibsinnliches Erleben und Erfahren”8 (Mattenklott 2013: online source). My interest in notions of Leib, became important in my daily work as a social worker, and more so due to the inclusion of aesthetic education in my work. At the same time, triggered by both my studies and my pedagogical practice, I became more interested in the question of who we are to and with each other. What is a human being to another human being? What shapes our relatedness, our interdependent existence and at the same time, hierarchies as they play out among humans? Professor of Pedagogy at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg Eckart Liebau underlines: “Menschen leben in Beziehungen; sie können gar nicht anders”9 (Liebau 2013: online source). Two crucial components of my practical and theoretical work in pedagogy thus have been and continue to be: 1. an educational approach inclusive of Leib, as it presents itself in aesthetic education and, 2. the understanding that humans are at any given point in time Mitmenschen; a term that I will leave in this text as a “stranger,” as translation scholar Carolyn Shread puts it (Shread 2016: presentation). After years of trying to translate it, I’ve come to the understanding that I cannot find a translation that transports all of its nuanced meanings. If I have to translate it in conversations, I use the term “with-human” to underline the inescapability of with/mit as human condition.
