La maternità surrogata: una prospettiva critica dell'addio al corpo del post-umanesimo

Human beings have their existence through the corporeal forms that beget them. Every modification of these forms implies a different definition of humanity. If its limits are written through the flesh which shapes men and women, both subtracting and adding other components transform their personal identity and landmarks which concern them in the eyes of the others. The present contribution seeks to analyze the cultural roots and the social consequences of the disgust of maternity and more in general of the body that are widespread in many currents of post-humanism. Maternal and gestational surrogacy as well as an augmented or refused body are therefore considered the expressions of that dismissal of the body that characterizes post-humanism and cyberculture. These extreme implications of the posthuman thought will be analyzed, in the light of Le Breton's and Giddens’ recent reflections. On the one hand, Le Breton discusses the theories of the augmented body, in which the body's limits are overcome through technological prosthesis and the support of the machine at all stages of human existence starting with ectogenesis which stands as the logical assumption of gestational surrogacy. On the other hand according to Giddens’ theory of Reflexive Modernity, we live in a time when the body and its natural dynamics are subtracted to the human beings and subjected to the domain of genetics and medicine and to the power of experts. It is then essential in the author's opinion to cope with these issues within a public debate about their ethical and social consequences.