Beyond Identity--A Dark Vision (Part 9 of 10)

Bookworm

KCRW

Arts

4.5 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2005

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Tom Wolfe discusses neuroscience and its view that there is no such thing as identity. Margaret Atwood talks about the coming threat to identity by cloning and genetic experimentation. Irish writer John Banville rails that identity does not exist.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.
0:05.0	You are a human animal.
0:10.0	You are a very special breed,
0:14.0	or you are the only animal,
0:18.0	who can think, who can reason, who can read.
0:22.1	From KCRW, Santa Monica, this is Bookworm. I'm Michael Silverblatt, and today we
0:27.6	continue our series, Escaping the Cage, Identity, Multiculturalism, and Writing.
0:32.8	We'll be talking about a brave new world of science and the definition of the human with
0:37.3	writers Tom
0:37.9	Wolf and Margaret Atwood. But first, this is Irish novelist John Banville, author of Shroud,
0:44.0	published in paperback by vintage. I spoke with him in Dublin in 2004 during the celebration of
0:50.6	the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday. When I look inside myself, I don't find a Don Banbill.
0:58.1	I'm speaking as an artist, not as a man.
1:00.6	There are always two people speaking here.
1:03.6	I increasingly come to the conclusion that there is no self,
1:10.5	that there is an infinite succession of cells.
1:15.6	If you were to classify my writing, it is post-humanist.
1:21.2	It does not regard human beings as the center of
1:27.8	the universe.
1:29.8	This seems to me
1:30.7	a post,
1:32.1	this seems to be
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from KCRW, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of KCRW and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.