Callahan, Brown, and Ideology

This one goes out on a theoretical limb...

The pairing of Callahan's article on ideology and Brown's article on politicization is an interesting one, in that the subject of Brown's article (politicization) is -- at least partially -- the enactment of the subject of Callahan's article (ideology).

Early on in his article, Brown comments:

"To say that something has been “politicized” implies that it was previously not political. [...] To some extent, of course, the meaning of controversial concepts like politics and politicization are essentially contestable, and so any generic definition is inevitably subject to challenge. What counts as political often becomes a political question itself." (Brown, 2 - emphasis added)

Brown has introduced an interesting schism here, one that can perhaps be best understood in terms of a divide between ontology and epistemology. The nature of the political (or, the political nature of something -- for example, bioethics) itself becomes a political question, thus forcing us to reflexively examine the manner in which we know the political. After acknowledging this problem, however, Brown abandons it -- to his argument's loss, I think.

Here Callahan points the way. It is at this divide between the ontological and the epistemological -- between definitions of the political and understanding how we arrive at these definitions -- that ideology functions. If we apply this conception to bioethics, then the problematization of the politicization of bioethics can be understood as a distinctly ideological phenomenon. That is to say, a change in the ontological status of the politics of bioethics (i.e. politicization) is only problematic if there is some sort of disjunction between the change and how we conceive of the change. This disjunction -- this gap -- is ideology.

As Callahan suggests, the study of ideology would then focus on both the gaps (negative masking) and their complement, the "bridges" between ontology and epistemology (positive masking) -- things that seem to be problematic but aren't necessarily so, and things that don't seem to be problematic but aren't necessarily so. Thus, the critique of ideology cuts far deeper than Brown's engagement, which (perhaps necessarily so, given his disciplinary situation) takes certain political terms/structures/processes for granted as his "building blocks". In turn, this limits Brown's ability to engage with the quickly changing reality of biotechnology (and by extension, the demands for new bioethics). What Callahan suggests is a much deeper critique -- a critique of the "building blocks" themselves. Given the rapidity of change within biotechnology, it seems likely that ideological critique is or will soon be a necessity for bioethics.

Bioethicists do not want to be stuck trying to build Notre Dame with Legos.