Uncanny sex: cloning, photographic vision, and the reproduction of nature

Abstract

The prospect of cloning human beings is an issue that has taken center-stage in public concern over biotechnology in recent years. While a significant literature has emerged around many of the difficult questions that are raised here, this article argues that cloning also serves as a potent signifier of anxieties over the place of “sex” in the natural order of things. In analyzing this connection, it proposes that the idea of human cloning unsettles us in a way that may profitably be understood in terms of Sigmund Freud's account of the uncanny. To elucidate this claim, the article draws parallels between Roland Barthes’ ontology of photography, Judith Butler's theory of gender melancholia, and the fiction of Kazuo Ishiguro. In all three cases, repetitions of sex and death at the limit of knowledge point to the uncanniness of cloning and compel a reassessment of the relation of (hetero)sexual reproduction to our understanding of nature and life.

Keywords:

• cloning
• sex
• biotechnology
• Freud
• the uncanny
• photography

Notes

1. The President's Council on Bioethics was established in 2001 by American president George W. Bush to provide advice on issues related to biomedicine and technology.

2. The headline “Brave New World of Cloning” in The Washington Post on 28 February 1997 is one prominent example here.

3. Most notably, Ian Wilmut – the scientist who led the team of researchers that cloned Dolly – has always strongly rejected the idea of cloning human beings. The key distinction here is between so-called “therapeutic” cloning for medical purposes and “reproductive” cloning for the purposes of (re)creating human beings. By rejecting the latter, scientists have tried to build public support for the former. This is illustrated by the discrediting of scientists like Panos Zavos, who has pursued (and claimed a limited amount of success in) human (reproductive) cloning (Haran et al. 2008, 76–81).

4. For example, Time magazine devoted an article to the Raelians' cloning claims on 5 January 2003, which were also widely reported in prominent news media outlets.

5. The same two scientists later (in May 2005) announced that they had developed a new and highly efficient method for human embryo cloning. This was, however, along with their original research, subsequently shown to be fraudulent and based on faked data (Cyranoski 2006).

6. There is still debate over the question of whether a cloned embryo does actually have the potential to become a human being. Some scientists argue that “imprinted” genes are not properly expressed in cloned human embryos, and thus the potential for a successful pregnancy is very low or perhaps non-existent.

7. There is a substantial literature that has emerged over the past 10 years in relation to debates over human cloning (both therapeutic and reproductive). For a sampling of this literature see the collections by Pence (1998), by Nussbaum and Sunstein (1998), and by McGee and Caplan (2004).

8. Jürgen Habermas (2003) also pinpoints freedom as the key issue in his discussion of the ethics of prenatal genetic manipulation. The stakes are somewhat different, however, as Habermas' concern is with genetic composition as it relates to individual freedom, rather than the free production of individuals.

9. It is not my intention here to argue either for or against human cloning. My point is more that cloning contains an ambiguous potential in relation to existing conceptions of nature or life, and that this should not be overlooked in critical assessments of its possibilities.

10. William Miller (1998) also associates cloning with the uncanny. Miller, however, regards uncanniness simply as a synonym for disgust or revulsion and conflates the three terms. In contrast, my argument here is that the uncanny belongs to a quite different affective register.

11. For further elaboration on the connection between gender and the uncanny see Garlick (2002).