A Bioethical Reading of Marinković’s Cyclops

Abstract

In the paper I present the incentives for addressing certain bioethical issues in Ranko Marinković’s novel Kiklop [Cyclops]. The novel uses the fear created by the war as a starting point for the problematisation of corporeality and history. As a result of escaping the threat of war, the imagination of Melkior Tresić (the novel’s main character) sharply separates mind and body. Corporeality becomes apparent precisely when it is under threat. This disclosure provokes us to reconsider the elements that should be morally defended in human beings. The implications may extend to our ethical treatment of animals. Technology, as another bioethically relevant topic, is approached in the novel from a firmly technophobic perspective by the character Maestro. A number of these themes are examined from the perspective of Mannheim’s analysis of ideology.Marinković’s concept of history is mostly recognised as ideological, articulary as Melkior assigns no value to history (nor to warfare), but rather reduces it to pure force. Finally, the aforementioned issues will be integrated into the context of a pluri-perspective methodology of integrative bioethics.