Anthony J. Gavin

Program
PhD, Interdisciplinary Studies

Supervisors
Dr. Emile Fromet de Rosnay (FRAN) and Dr. Audrey Yap (PHIL)

Anthony J. Gavin is an Individual Interdisciplinary PhD Candidate, housed in the French and Philosophy departments at UVic. He is also a member of the Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture Society / Théorie et culture existentialistes et phénoménologiques, and two-time fellow at UVic’s Electronic Textual Cultures Lab, through its Open Knowledge Practicum. His areas of specialization include deconstruction, critical posthumanism, biopolitics, and new materialism, with additional areas of expertise in continental philosophy, science and technology studies, feminism, philosophy of race, and disability studies. Anthony’s research explores the aesthetic, ecological, and ethical entanglements between human sub/cultures and cellular microcultures, particularly in relation to the rapid rise of inexpensive and highly advanced gene-editing tools like CRISPR/Cas9. His current research project is centered around human genome editing, but acknowledges that what we call ‘human’ is a slippery concept at best. Anthony’s research theorizes that the posthuman subject is precisely that which elides current conversations around the ethics of creating ‘designer babies’ and real-life superheroes (and supervillains). While the transhuman subject is typified by technologically-driven attempts to perfect or overcome our finite ‘human’ form, the posthuman subject is more frequently linked with laboratory accidents, exposure to toxic wastes, and the works of ‘mad scientists’. Keeping with this insight, Anthony’s research pays special attention to how gene-editing biotech itself elides safe containment inside of a conventional laboratory settings, by documenting its rise in the DIY biohacker movement and in biopunk aesthetics.

In addition to his doctoral research, Anthony is a term faculty member in the Philosophy Department at Camosun College. He has taught courses in Social and Political Philosophy, Current Ethical Issues, and Logic and Critical Thinking.

Some of his recent published work can be found in issue #31 of Epoché Philosophy Monthly (May 2020), https://epochemagazine.org/31/the-poverty-of-bioethics-medical-austerity-distributive-justice-and-disability/, as well as in Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, no. 35 (2019), http://rhizomes.net/issue35/index.html.