Articles and Chapters by Dana S. Belu
Phenomenology and The Philosophy of Technology, editors Jochem Zier & Bas de Boer, 2025
This chapter combines phenomenology and social constructivism to discuss the radical technologiza... more This chapter combines phenomenology and social constructivism to discuss the radical technologization of women’s reproductive bodies through the use of assisted reproductive technology (ARTS) such as IVF (in vitro fertilization) and IVG (in vitro gametogenesis). Neither phenomenology nor social constructivism is able to make sense of this technologization. However, by combining aspects of Heidegger’s phenomenology of technology with the social constructivist theories of Sarah Franklin and Andrew Feenberg I show how IVF and IVG frame women’s reproductive bodies as neither subjects nor objects of technical action, but as volatile experimental resources. Moreover, I show that such technologization is itself minimized, deliberately forgotten and that this compromises the user’s identity or vocation.
Gender Studies, 2023
This article examines briefly the implications of the recent repeal of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Su... more This article examines briefly the implications of the recent repeal of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court. While these implications are dire for women’s rights all over the country, even in those states where abortion is still legal, the repeal may also herald the cancelation of other recently granted rights, such as same sex marriage. Consequently, it is necessary to mount a meaningful resistance to prevent such developments and to find other ways of guaranteeing the right of women to take decisions regarding their own body.
Foundations of Science, 2021
This essay is a response to Robert Scharff's "Before Empirical Turns and Transcendental Inquiry: ... more This essay is a response to Robert Scharff's "Before Empirical Turns and Transcendental Inquiry: pre-philosophical Considerations". Scharff digs beneath the empirico-transcendental debate between Ihde and Stiegler in order to critique this debate's Cartesian presuppositions. He uses the work of Nietzsche and the early Heidegger to further his critique. There is much to like in Scharff's rich and intricate analytic interpretation but this is also the crux of my critique. The detour into Nietzsche's and the early Heidegger's work is ultimately unnecessary. If Scharff looks closer, he will see that Feenberg's revised theory of instrumentalization already accomplishes the return to technical experience and the critique of Cartesian techno scientific rationality that Scharff desires.
Being and Value in Technology, 2022
Currently, the ART (assisted reproductive technology) industry is unregulated, helping to produce... more Currently, the ART (assisted reproductive technology) industry is unregulated, helping to produce human beings that would not exist otherwise. This production takes place through societally funded medical procedures but without public discussion, ethical and environmental considerations. Since human beings are the biggest source of carbon emissions on the planet, it is imperative to impose regulations on the ART industry in order to reduce life-threatening carbon emissions for all. This chapter uses key aspects of liberal feminism and feminist phenomenology to advocate for the international regulation of transnational gestational surrogacy or commercial surrogacy, the most popular of all ARTs. I bring out the procedural, phenomenological, intercorporeal and technological dimensions of gestational subjectivity that together expose the hidden anthropogenic harm at work in the billion-dollar business of commercial surrogacy. Finally, I advocate for its international regulation on feminist and environmental grounds.
Sustainability in the Anthropocene: Philosophical Essays on Renewable Technologies (Postphenomenology and the Phenomenology of Technology, Series), 2019
Choosing to have multiple biological children, especially through the use of advanced reproductiv... more Choosing to have multiple biological children, especially through the use of advanced reproductive technology (ART), is environmentally problematic in the age of the Anthropocene. According to recent research, the proliferation of ART in first world countries and for first world customers operating in third world countries increases carbon emissions and cuts against widespread efforts to promote the sustainability of the planet. While this is one of ART’s overlooked externalities, there is a more concealed phenomenon closely associated with the proliferation of ART. The use of advanced in vitro fertil-ization (IVF)-based ART, such as cytoplasmic transfer (CT) and gestational surrogacy among others, sets up women as (extractable) resources in the service of reproductive technologies. This contributes to the instrumentaliza-tion of human relationships and it reflects the reduction of all things to mere resources, a phenomenon that underlies the wider ecological crisis. While the discourse of freedom as autonomy emphasizes that ARTs empower women, it conceals their resource status. The inversion, women primarily serving the technology rather than the technology serving women, is not clearly visible at the individual level, but comes into full view when women in their relationship to various ARTs are framed as a group, such as in the practice of international gestational surrogacy. This reframing reveals the women and their offspring as extractable resources, their bodies serving the technologies allegedly designed to meet their needs. Each new genera-tion of IVF children contributes to the naturalization of ARTs while at the same time helping to enroll new human beings as resources for a growing ART network.
Spaces for the Future: A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology, eds. Joseph Pitt and Ashley Shew, 2017
This article provides a phenomenological interpretation of technological and natural (or drug fre... more This article provides a phenomenological interpretation of technological and natural (or drug free) childbirth. By using Heidegger’s ontology of technology I argue that these two types of contemporary childbirth present us with a false dilemma as both reflect the norms Heidegger associates with modernity, namely order, control, and efficiency.
The Cambridge Heidegger Lexicon, editor Mark Wrathall, 2021
See entries nr. 51 and nr. 94
This chapter brings out the aspects of Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology, early and late, tha... more This chapter brings out the aspects of Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology, early and late, that have influenced Feenberg’s social phenomenology of technology. In the first part of the chapter I evaluate the influence that Heidegger’s concept of the enframing (Ge-stell) exerts on Feenberg’s philosophy of technology. In the second part I discuss the influence of Heidegger’s early phenomenology (interpreted by Feenberg as a phenomenology of action based on the model of craftwork) on Feenberg’s phenomenology of technical action. These two influences, I argue, converge in Feenberg’s instrumentalization theory, later rearticulated as the functionalization theory of technology. Combining this two-tiered theory about the function and meaning of modern technical devices and production with Marcuse’s call for an “aesthetic Lebenswelt” leads Feenberg to articulate a new form of rationality. This new form of rationality includes a reformation of technical design that reflects life-affirming ...
Heidegger, Reproductive Technology, & The Motherless Age, 2017
This chapter enlists the Heideggerian concept of enframing along with Aristotle’s distinction bet... more This chapter enlists the Heideggerian concept of enframing along with Aristotle’s distinction between nature and art, in order to attempt to discern where control over the spark of life lies in human reproduction through in vitro fertilization (IVF): with nature or with medical technology? I argue that if we continue to think of IVF technologies as giving us a piece of nature, as we currently do, the truly technological and revolutionary dimensions of the machinery and of the cultural outlook remain submerged and invisible. Finally, the chapter questions the patriarchal attachment to parenthood as biological ownership that is presupposed by the proliferation of human conception through IVF.
The emergence of new forms of reproductive technology raise an increasingly complex array of soci... more The emergence of new forms of reproductive technology raise an increasingly complex array of social and ethical issues. Nevertheless, this paper focuses on commonplace reproductive technologies used during labor and birth such as ultrasound, fetal monitoring, episiotomy, epidurals, labor induction, amniotomy, and cesarean section. This paper maintains that social pressures increase women's perceived need to such reproductive technologies and thus undermine women's capacity to choose an elective cesarean or avoid an emergency cesarean. Routine, normalized use of technology interferes with the possibility of choosing use of technology where best suited through misdirecting laboring women to use technological resources whenever possible. This normalized use of technology decreases risk tolerance and increases dependence on technology for reassurance, which bears significant implications for selftrust and self-confidence. My account encourages women's cultivation of autonomy as a capacity interconnected with our own attitudes and those of other persons; and as a function of cultivating trust and confidence in one's body.
Inquiry, 2010
This paper investigates Heidegger’s ontology of technology in order to show that this ontology is... more This paper investigates Heidegger’s ontology of technology in order to show that this ontology is aporetic. In Heidegger’s key technical essays, “The Question Concerning Technology” and its earlier versions “Ge-stell” and “The Danger”, enframing is described as the ontological basis of modern life. But the account of enframing is ambiguous. Sometimes it is described as totally binding and at other times it appears to allow for exceptions. This oscillation between, what we will call total enframing and partial enframing, is underscored in the work of two influential scholars of Heidegger’s later thought, Hubert Dreyfus and Iain Thomson. We show that like Heidegger, Dreyfus and Thomson unwittingly perpetuate this dilemma that ultimately covers up the aporetic structure of enframing.
Book by Dana S. Belu
This book examines the use and proliferation of advanced reproductive technologies through the le... more This book examines the use and proliferation of advanced reproductive technologies through the lens of Heidegger’s phenomenology of technology and feminist interpretations of ART. It suggests feminist forms of maternal resistance, alternatives to enframed birth and argues in favor of maternal agency and empathy during childbirth.
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book.
Heidegger, Reproductive Technology, & The Motherless Age, 2017
While I was revising this manuscript, the first volumes of Heidegger's Black Notebooks (Schwarze ... more While I was revising this manuscript, the first volumes of Heidegger's Black Notebooks (Schwarze Hefte/GA 94-96) were published in Germany and were publicly excoriated. It is beyond the scope of my present work to comment on the various failings of the Black Notebooks. It is relevant to note, however, that GA 94-96, spanning the years 1931-1941, raise important hermeneutical questions and concerns about machination (Machenschaft) as the genesis of Heidegger's later concept of Ge-stell or enframing. Consistent with the ontologization of machination and enframing in GA 65, GA 5, GA 7, and GA 79, machination in GA 94-96, is described as a principle that organizes entire Western societies; a sending of being, an epoch(é) of our forgetfulness of being. According to Heidegger, "the highest reign of Being as machination spreads the complete forgetfulness of Being all around" (GA 95, 385; my translation). Machination hides (94: 296) in the age of the domination of the lack of questioning of Being (94: 315) and it takes shape as: science, technology, culture" (GA 94: 420). The entire Western world, as Heidegger sees it in GA 94-96, is caught up in machination.
Book Reviews by Dana S. Belu
Review by Tamara Cashour, Phenomenological Reviews, 2018
This book succeeds as a phenomenological project guided securely by Heideggerian principles, in i... more This book succeeds as a phenomenological project guided securely by Heideggerian principles, in its philosophical assessment of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), which conspire literally, in the making of mothers. Belu draws ... upon Heidegger’s concepts ... (most overarchingly: the principle of Gestell [Enframing]) to fashion a critique of ARTs protocols and practices, which, since their initial inception/acceptance in the last quarter of the 20th century, have achieved globalized integration into the process of bringing a new human into the world.......
Book Review by Jill Drouillard, Bulletin Heideggerien , 2018
D’après Heidegger, chaque époque/épochè est caractérisé par un certain mode de révélation... more D’après Heidegger, chaque époque/épochè est caractérisé par un certain mode de révélation des étants, qui est à la fois une dissimulation d’une façon de l’Être. Ce mode particulier paraît ne venir de nulle part en ce qu’il se base sur un certain oubli. Dana S. Belu le met en scène pour son livre en faisant valoir la tendance de Heidegger « to treat the history of being (Seinsgeschichte) as a noncausal succession of universal principles of intelligibility that presupposes the forgetting (Seinsvergessenheit) of the clearing (die Lichtung) as their source » (p. 15). L’oubli de notre époque est marqué par une divulgation technologique dans le mode de l’arraisonnement (Gestell) où les étants se révèlent comme partie du fonds (Bestand) d’être calculés, manipulés, exploités, et mis en réserve pour un usage ultérieur. La phénoménologie féministe de l’A. essaie de faire sens à la gestation, la maternité et la procréation médicalement assistée (PMA) qui font aux femmes faire partie de ce fonds et ouvre, parmi les paramètres du Gestell, la porte à une ère « sans mère ».
APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy, Spring 2015 containing a reviews of Mothering Queerly,... more APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy, Spring 2015 containing a reviews of Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood by Shelly Park (reviewed by Sarah LaChance Adams)
and a review of and Mad Mothers, Bad Mothers, and What a 'Good' Mother Would Do by Sarah LaChance Adams (reviewed by Dana Belu)
Papers by Dana S. Belu
Heidegger Circle Conference, panel with Patricia Glazebrook and Natalie Nenadic, 2015
In Heidegger's work on the technological age as the age of Ge-Stell, maternity and childbirth mak... more In Heidegger's work on the technological age as the age of Ge-Stell, maternity and childbirth make only the slightest appearance. He typically describes Ge-Stell using examples taken from industry and non-human nature. However, extending Heidegger's concept to the phenomenon of gestational surrogacy, atypical of his writing, I'll argue, can do the important work of showing us something that otherwise would not get seen: the deletion of motherhood, as we've known it, in our time. Heidegger opens "The Danger" with the following remarks about the essence of the technical age (Ge-Stell, enframing, positionality): …. Objects are no longer permitted much less the thing as thing…In the essence of positionality the thing remains unguarded as thing… In our language, where it still inceptually speaks, the word "guard" [die Wahr] means protection. In our Swabian dialect this word "guard" means a child entrusted to maternal protection. Positionality … lets the thing go … without the guard of its essence as thing… In the unguarding of the thing there takes place the refusal of world. (Heidegger 2012: 44-45) Heidegger swiftly moves past this reference to mothers and children, transposing the absence (or is it a loss?) of maternal care onto the mode of the technological disclosure itself. Claiming that he is not making a value judgment (Werturteil) but articulating a hidden ontological condition, Heidegger refers to (the world of) the thing (das Ding) as
Heidegger Circle Panel with Richard Polt, Patricia Glazebrook and Thomas Sheehan, 2017
Heidegger Circle Proceedings, 2018
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Articles and Chapters by Dana S. Belu
Book by Dana S. Belu
Book Reviews by Dana S. Belu
and a review of and Mad Mothers, Bad Mothers, and What a 'Good' Mother Would Do by Sarah LaChance Adams (reviewed by Dana Belu)
Papers by Dana S. Belu
and a review of and Mad Mothers, Bad Mothers, and What a 'Good' Mother Would Do by Sarah LaChance Adams (reviewed by Dana Belu)