The Third World Body Commodified Essay Sample

This essay offers a reading of Indian author Manjula Padmanabhan’s dystopian drama Harvest ( 1997 ) in order to analyze the trade in human variety meats and the commoditization of the 3rd universe organic structure that such a trade is predicated upon. Padmanabhan’s drama. in which an unemployed Indian adult male sells the rights to his organic structure parts to a purchaser in the United States. pointedly critiques the commoditization of the healthy third-world organic structure. which. thanks to important progresss in transplant medical specialty. has now become a bank of trim parts for ailing organic structures in the first universe.

Describing this phenomenon as a instance of ‘neo-cannibalism’ . anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes ( 1998. p. 14 ) notes that wealthy but ailing patients in the first-world are progressively turning to healthy if destitute populations of the third-world in order to secure ‘spare’ organic structure parts. It is alluring. at first glimpse. to read this illicit planetary economic system as yet another illustration of the development of third-world organic structures that planetary capitalist economy gives rise to.

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Scheper-Hughes herself suggests that the trade in human variety meats is best understood in the context of planetary capitalist economy when she points out that the planetary circuit of variety meats mirrors the circuit of capital flows in the epoch of globalization: ‘from South to North. from Third to First universe. from hapless to rich. from black and brown to white’ ( 2002. p. 197 ) .

And yet. as I argue in my essay. the human organ can non be equated with other objects produced in the third-world for first-world ingestion because the organ is non a merchandise of the laboring third-world organic structure. Unlike the trade good exported from an exploitatory third-world sweatshop. the organ is non produced by the third-world organic structure but extracted from it. The organ’s peculiar feature as a merchandise that requires no labor in order to bring a monetary value provides the key to understanding why third-world populations are progressively willing to be preyed upon by first-world organ purchasers.

Many theoreticians composing about planetary capitalist economy today have pointed out that first-world economic systems are progressively reliant non on production but ingestion ( Harvey. 2000. Bauman. 1998. and Hardt and Negri. 2004 ) . The work force of the first-world is of all time more disengaged from industrial labor and industry either because. in the aftermath of technological progresss. such labor is carried out by non-human agencies. or instead. because human labor is obtained elsewhere. In their thrust to multiply net incomes. first-world economic systems rely on production sites where labor is ‘cheaper. less self-asserting. less taxed. more feminised [ and ] less protected by provinces and unions’ ( Comaroff and Comaroff. 2000. p. 295 ) . Typically located in the third-world. such production sites displace human labor to remote geographical locations. leting for industrial production to go progressively less seeable in the first-world. The first-world. on the other manus. sees a proliferation of service-economies. economic systems which rely on consumers to buy progressively non-material trade goods. Yet organ trade does non purely correspond to this planetary economic form.

The organ is so a stuff good originating in the third-world. but it is non the merchandise of labor. It is. instead. a merchandise that can be sold without the outgo of labor. while assuring to bring forth ‘wealth without production. value without effort’ ( Comaroff and Comaroff. 2000. p. 313 ) . Undreamt-of sums of money with small to no labor: this is the peculiar promise that organ sale extends to the impoverished and disenfranchised populations of the third-world. In order to understand the frequently resistless enticement of this promise. we must research non the transmutation in the conditions of capitalist production. but instead the transmutation in the societal complex numbers of the labouring hapless. Jean and John Comaroff theorise merely this transmutation. Harmonizing to the Comaroffs. capitalist economy today presents itself to the laboring hapless in a millennian. messianic signifier. publicizing itself as ‘a Gospel of redemption ; [ as ] a capitalist economy that. if justly harnessed. is invested with the capacity entirely to transform the existence of the marginalised and the disempowered’ ( 2000. p. 292 ) . Therefore. the key to understanding millennian capitalist economy lies in the peculiar trade name of seduction upon which it operates.

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This seductiveness. they argue. is most visibly manifested in the unprecedented proliferation of ‘occult economies’ in the third-world ( 2000. p. 312 ) . The Comaroffs cite non merely organ trade as an illustration of these occult economic systems. but besides the sale of services such as fortune-telling. or the development of tourer industries bases on the sighting of monsters ( 2000. p. 310 ) . Occult economic systems are characterised by the fact that they respond to the temptingness of ‘accruing wealth from nothing’ ( Comaroff and Comaroff. 2000. p. 313 ) . In other words. supernatural economic systems are animated by the same inclination that motivates wealthaccruing actions like chancing or guess on the stock market. It is within this millennian context that we need to understand the determination of the organ-seller to ship on the sale of her organ and seek out the supernatural economic system of the variety meats market.

The organ-seller’s voluntary determination is brought on by that set of contradictory emotions. hope and desperation. that millennian capitalist economy and its supernatural economic systems unleash upon their marks. Despair. because the proprietor of a healthy organ is immiserated. hapless and hopelessly excluded from capitalism’s promise of planetary prosperity. Hope. because millennian capitalism’s supernatural economic systems hold out the promise of a speedy hole to this status by showing a new. quasimagical agencies of doing adequate money to get the better of poorness. Making money. This is the promise that the occult economic system of organ trade extends to its objects: sell your organ and you will do more money than you will of all time gain through old ages of labor and labor. The promise of millennian capitalist economy works because it allows the third-world person to see her organic structure as that which contains a natural ‘spare’ portion. a of course happening excess that is non the merchandise of labour yet is still in high demand. The third-world person is therefore organic structure has a ‘spare’ of – a kidney. a cornea – in order to work out all her pecuniary jobs.

The organ hence emerges as a really curious sort of trade good: 1 that is non produced by a drudging human organic structure. but instead extracted from it. What sort of trade good. so. is the organ? Indeed. is it a trade good at all? It is informative to turn here to Karl Marx’s treatment of a peculiar sort of trade good: 1 that has a use-value. and therefore carry through a demand. yet no value. insofar as it is non the merchandise of labor. 1 Marx’s primary illustration of such a trade good. which he discusses in the 3rd volume of Capital. is land. Marx recognises that there are assorted manners of production originating from land. but he chooses to concentrate on the peculiar instance of agricultural production. where the farmer-capitalist rentals a certain sum of land. and pays the proprietor of this land a fixed amount of money every month in the signifier of rent. Parenthetically. he adds that ‘instead of agribusiness. we might every bit hold taken excavation. since the Torahs are the same’ ( 1991. p. 752 ) . The phrase is implicative. because both instances. agribusiness and excavation. affect the extraction of something from the land. We might easy include the human organic structure in the same class. In the scenario I explore here. the organic structure. like land. is mined for its variety meats. and. as the rubric of the drama I discuss below suggests. variety meats are removed. harvested. from the organic structure.

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Marx’s treatment of land as a trade good offers yet farther penetrations into the trade in human organic structure parts. In Capital III. he explicitly states that to talk of land as holding value is ‘prima facie irrational [ … ] . since the Earth In Capital I. Marx explains that a trade good has both a qualitative and a quantitative facet. The commodity’s use-value resides in its qualitative facet: ‘The utility of a thing makes it a use-value. But this utility does non swing in mid-air. It is conditioned by the physical belongingss of the trade good. and has no being apart from the latter. [ … ] Use-values are merely realised in usage or ingestion. [ … ] In the signifier of society to be considered here [ read. the capitalist manner of production ] they [ use-values ] are besides the stuff carriers of [ … ] exchange-value’ ( 1990. p. 126 ) . Exchange-value. says Marx. is the quantitative dimension of the trade good ; it is ‘the proportion in which use-values of one sort exchange for use-values of another kind’ ( 1990. p. 126 ) .

However. Marx argues. the belongings that renders two trade goods commensurable is the fact that they both contain a common component. This common component is value. or the measure of abstract human labor objectified within a given trade good. Exchange-value is therefore ‘the necessary manner of look. or signifier of visual aspect. of value’ and emerges as such under the conditions of capitalist economy ( 1990. p. 128 ) . is non a merchandise of labor. and therefore does non hold a value’ ( 1991. p. 760 ) . And yet. as Marx recognises. the fact remains that land has a monetary value. a moneysum for which it can be exchanged. We might add here that the organ. excessively. fetches a monetary value without being a merchandise of labor. From whence so. does this monetary value originate? To this inquiry Marx provides a really unequivocal reply:

[ T ] he monetary values of things that have no value in and of themselves – either non being merchandises of labor. like land. or which can non be reproduced by labour [ … ] – may be determined by rather causeless combinations of fortunes. For a thing to be sold. it merely has to be capable of being monopolised and alienated ( 1991. p. 772. accent added ) .

Capitalist production. argues Marx. develops exactly by virtuousness of its ability to monopolize and estrange the particular. natural belongingss of use-values without value. such as land. Therefore. the sale of land might look. superficially. to be similar to the sale of a produced trade good. However. they have different theoretical positions ( Foley. 1986. p. 28 ) . As Duncan Foley explains:

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If we want to understand value dealingss in trade good production. we should center our attending foremost of all on conditions of production. on factors such as labour productiveness. If we want to understand value dealingss affecting nonproduced things. we should look. non to production. but to the rights involved in ownership of these things and to the bargaining places these rights give to their owners ( 1986. p. 28-9. accent added ) .

It is thanks to the societal phenomenon of landed belongings that land is able to command a fixed. agreed-upon money-sum. in the signifier of rent if the land is leased. and in the signifier of a monetary value if it is sold. The legal impression of landed belongings efficaciously alienates certain parts of land and decrees them as the sole ownership of a given person. As Marx puts it: [ T ] he legal construct [ of private belongings ] itself means nil more than that the landholder can act in relation to the land merely as any trade good proprietor can with his trade goods ( 1991. p. 753 ) .

Landed belongings therefore renders land into an alienable. monopolisable good in the ownership of a given person who can now sell it.
As the work of Lawrence Cohen ( 2002 ) shows us. the organ. excessively. has been rendered alienable. Cohen argues that biomedical progresss in transplant medical specialty have led to the possibility non merely of pull outing and reassigning an organ from one individual to another: more significantly. these progresss have created a much larger pool of both potentially utile variety meats and compatible receivers likewise. This ‘fortuitous combination of circumstances’ . to cite Marx ( 1991. p. 772 ) . consequences from the development of extremely effectual immunosuppressor drugs such as cyclosporine.

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The development of cyclosporine. Cohen provinces. efficaciously means that patients expecting kidney grafts are no longer dependent on kidneys that match their ain tissue types ( 2002 ) . Theoretically. so. it is extremely likely that anyone wishing to sell their ‘spare’ organ will easy happen a purchaser for it. for immunosuppressant drugs greatly cut down the opportunities that the organ will be rejected by its new proprietor. The reaching of cyclosporine. as Cohen puts it. ‘ [ has ] allow [ ed ] specific subpopulations to go “same enough” for their members to be surgically disaggregated and their parts reincorporated’ ( 2002. p. 12 ) .

If. as Marx says. a thing needs simply to be monopolisable and alienable in order to be sold. so the planetary black market in variety meats shows that this procedure is good underway in the instance of organic structure parts. 2 Much more fraught. nevertheless. is the inquiry of what it means to have one’s organic structure and the variety meats that comprise it. Land ceases to be a free resource for all one time a given province espouses the impression of private belongings upon which capitalist economy is founded. An organ. nevertheless. is ever the ownership of a given person. who. theoretically talking. is hence entitled to sell it. should she so choose. And yet the statute law adopted by most states of the universe. explicitly forbiding the trade in human organic structure parts. proves otherwise. Catherine Waldby and Robert Mitchell argue that if. along with the United States. Canada. Australia and New Zealand. no state in Western Europe has every bit yet legalised the sale and purchase of human organic structure tissues. this is due to the fact that most politicians and bioethicists in these states uphold the human organic structure as ‘the venue of absolute self-respect [ … ] . [ This ] [ vitamin D ] ignity is destroyed if any portion of the organic structure is assigned a market value and rendered alienable’ ( 2006. p. 19 ) .

Mentioning Paul Rabinow. Waldby and Mitchell explain that such an apprehension of self-respect as an unalienable human right is derived from Kant’s differentiation between self-respect and monetary value: In the land of terminals everything has either a monetary value or a self-respect. Whatever has a monetary value can be replaced by something else as its equivalent ; on the other manus. whatever is above all monetary value. and hence admits of no equivalent. has a self-respect. ( Kant. 1981. p. 40. cited in Waldby and Mitchell. 2006. p. 19 ) The most searching reviews of the commoditization. be it illicit or legalised. of human organic structure parts. spring from a similar construct of the self-respect of the human organic structure. Nancy Scheper-Hughes ( 2000 ) describes organ market proposals as being founded upon useful and neo-liberal principals that systematically undermine the cardinal self-respect of the human organic structure. Furthermore. these libertarian statements emphasize the right of every person to take whether or non to sell what she owns. However. as Scheper-Hughes points out. the really thought of pick becomes debatable in most third-world contexts:

Bio-ethical statements about the right to sell are based on EuroAmerican impressions of contract and single ‘choice’ . But societal and economic contexts make the ‘choice’ to sell a kidney in an urban slum of Calcutta or in a Brazilian favela anything but a ‘free’ and ‘autonomous’ one ( 2001. [ n. p. ] ) . The balance of this essay discusses Harvest. a drama which. I shall reason. launches a scathing review of the variety meats market and of the planetary. marauding capitalist economy that consequences in the commoditization of the third-world organic structure. Indian author Manjula Padmanabhan’s 1997 drama confronts us with a futuristic Bombay of the twelvemonth 2010. a clip when legal. moral and bioethical arguments about organ gross revenues and grafts have been overcome.

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The trade in human variety meats is now to the full institutionalised and swimmingly operated by the entity incarnating all the predatory forces of planetary capitalist economy: a multinational corporation named Interplanta Services. The dramatis personae. Padmanabhan’s phase waies tell us. is divided into two chief groups dwelling of Third World givers and First World receiving systems. Although Padmanabhan chooses. ‘ [ f ] or the interest of coherence’ . to do the givers Indian and the receiving systems North American. her phase waies emphasise that: the givers and receiving systems should take on the racial individualities. names. costumes and speech patterns most suited to the location of production. It matters merely that there be a extremely recognizable differentiation between the two groups. reflected in address. vesture and visual aspect ( 1997. p. 217 ) .

The play’s futuristic scene allows Padmanabhan to deploy a series of sci-fi appliances on phase. Their intent. I argue. is to alarm us to the important function that engineering dramas in both seducing and patroling the third-world givers into entry. It is thanks to one such sci-fi appliance that we see the first-world receiving system and organ buyer Ginny. whose organic structure is ne’er present on phase. but seeable merely on a screen suspended from the ceiling. The four Indian givers belong to the same family: Om ; his married woman Jaya ; Om’s female parent. referred to merely as Ma ; and Om’s younger brother. Jeetu. While Padmanabhan uses her donor characters to interrogate the peculiar fortunes that make the option of selling one’s organic structure parts so seductive. finally. I contend. she upholds the Kantian thought of human self-respect which views the merchandising of one’s organic structure parts as a misdemeanor of human unity.

When the drama opens. Jaya and her mother-in-law are impatiently waiting for Om’s return from his occupation interview. Both are antsy: Ma fierily hopes that Om will acquire the occupation ; Jaya. cognizing what the occupation entails. hopes that he will non. But Om returns to denote that he has so been selected for the ‘job’ at Interplanta Services. Having passed the medical trials at Interplanta. he has been decreed an eligible. healthy campaigner for selling the rights to his full organic structure to an anon. purchaser in the United States. His baffled feelings about subscribing such a contract allow Padmanabhan to portray the complex mixture of hope and desperation that has motivated his actions. At first. he verges on the enraptured: ‘We’ll have more money than you and I have names for! ’ he says to Ma. proudly. ‘Who’d believe there’s so much money in the universe? ’ ( 1997. p. 219 ) . When his married woman expresses her reserves for what he has done. he becomes defensive:

You think I did it lightly. But [ … ] we’ll be rich! Very rich! Insanely rich! But you’d instead unrecorded in this one little room. I suppose! Think it’s such a all right thing – life twenty-four hours in. twenty-four hours out. like monkeys in a hot-case – lulled to kip by our neighbours’ rhythmic flatus! [ … ] And starvation ( 1997. p. 223 ) .

When Jaya accuses him of doing the incorrect pick. he is inexorable that his determination was non made of his ain free will:
Om: I went because I lost my occupation at the company. And why did I lose it? Because I am a clerk and cipher demands clerks
any longer! There are no new occupations now – there’s nil left for people like us! Don’t you know that?
Jaya: You’re incorrect. there are picks – there must be picks – Om: Huh! I didn’t choose. I stood in waiting line and was chosen! And if non this waiting line. there would hold been other waiting lines – [ … ] ( 1997. p. 238 )

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