Putting animal parts into humans: a political analysis

Johannes Kögel

doi:10.53981/destrocos.v6i2.61076

Authors

Johannes Kögel Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2103-4643

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.53981/destrocos.v6i2.61076

Keywords:

biopolitics, xenotransplantation, animals, humanization

Abstract

The roles of animals—particularly pigs and nonhuman primates—in xenotransplantation reveal complex ethical and symbolic dynamics. Nonhuman primates, due to their cognitive proximity to humans, were increasingly positioned as recipients rather than organ sources, reflecting an ethical “hierarchical upgrade.” Pigs, genetically engineered to provide organs, embody an ambiguous status: highly alienated through biotechnological manipulation and sterile confinement, as “biocapital” commodified and embedded in market logics. Their “humanization”, besides a change of their genetic-make, also features as standing in for humans, even though in a different role than their primate counterparts. The ethical connotation of this may benefit those animals in the long run. Recognizing animal alterity—not merely as biological bodies but as intentional subjects—as, for example, suggested by Amerindian metaphysics, reshapes the understanding of identity and medical practice amid molecular and semiotic conceptions of life. These considerations call for nuanced reflection on the boundaries between nature, culture, and species in contemporary biomedicine.

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Author Biography

Johannes Kögel, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg

Johannes Kögel, a philosopher and sociologist by training, has conducted research and published works on migration, postcolonial sociology, and biotechnologies—particularly brain-computer interfaces and xenotransplantation. He is the author of the monograph Navigating Nationality and currently serves as a Research Associate in Germany.

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