Emmanuel Levinas and the face of Terri Schiavo: bioethical and phenomenological reflections on a private tragedy and public spectacle

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 33 (6):405-420 (2012)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The controversial case of Terri Schiavo came to a close on March 31, 2005, with her death following the removal of a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube. This event followed years of controversy and social upheaval. Voices from across the entire political and cultural spectrums filled the airwaves and op-ed pages of major newspapers. Protests ensued outside of Ms. Schiavo’s care facility. Ms. Schiavo’s parents published videos of their daughter on the internet in an effort to prove that she was not in a vegetative state and could potentially recover. There is a certain mystery to the entire controversy given the fact that, legally, it was largely a matter of settled law. Precedent cases and legal statutes clearly set out the proper procedures and decisions to be followed in this case. Nonetheless, powerful challenges and virulent opposition to these standards arose. Through an investigation of this case as well as a comparative study of the case of Dax Cowart (in particular, the documentary depictions of Dax Cowart’s case) and of a photograph by Joel-Peter Witkin, I plan to investigate the source of these social upheavals and hypothesize that they were largely the result of a phenomenological reaction to the human face

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 103,314

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Currents in Contemporary Ethics.David John Doukas - 2005 - Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 33 (2):372-374.
Terri Schiavo and the language of biopolitics.Sarah K. Hansen - 2012 - International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 5 (1):91-112.
Reflections on the Terri Schiavo Case.Stephen M. Krason - 2006 - Catholic Social Science Review 11:347-351.
The challenge of Terri Schiavo: lessons for bioethics.T. Koch - 2005 - Journal of Medical Ethics 31 (7):376-378.
Nothing's Settled.Sandra H. Johnson - 2011 - Hastings Center Report 41 (1):50-51.
Diagnosing the permanent vegetative state.Ronald Cranford - 2006 - In Arthur L. Caplan, James J. McCartney & Dominic A. Sisti, The case of Terri Schiavo: ethics at the end of life. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-03-10

Downloads
78 (#277,905)

6 months
5 (#702,808)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Michael Dahnke
Drexel University

Citations of this work

Devotion, Diversity, and Reasoning: Religion and Medical Ethics.Michael D. Dahnke - 2015 - Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 12 (4):709-722.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Totality and infinity.Emmanuel Levinas - 1961/1969 - Pittsburgh,: Duquesne University Press.
Writing and Difference.Jacques Derrida - 1978 - Chicago: Routledge.
Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection.Julia Kristeva - 1984 - Columbia University Press.
Active and passive euthanasia.James Rachels - 2000 - In Steven M. Cahn, Exploring Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology. New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press USA.

View all 15 references / Add more references