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Chapter 29
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-9461-3.ch029
Human Enhancement
Technologies and
Democratic Citizenship
ABSTRACT
This chapter articulates that scholars write about Human Enhancement Technologies (HET) in two
ways. This is not a refection of a reality in the literature but rather a heuristic designed to contextual-
ize democratic citizenship within contemporary HET discussions. The frst way is to write about HET
as possible realities far of into the future. The second way is to write about HET that can be realised
seemingly as soon as tomorrow. For democratic citizenship, writing in the frst case is either utopian or
dystopian. It is either the projection of democracy’s total triumph or its utter collapse caused by the type
of rots that lead to democide. But writing in the second case is stimulating and vibrant. There are, for
example, numerous calls for HET-led reforms in the literature. These reforms are needed to help answer
the crisis of the citizen’s august discontent (the growing and increasingly legitimized political apathy
and political abstention observed in, and performed by, the citizenry). The purpose of this chapter is to
focus on this second case–this more developed body of literature–and to theorise the interface between
democratic citizenship and HET.
INTRODUCTION
As an area of study, citizenship boasts a large and
varied body of literature. Key foci include the
more traditional concern about an individual’s
relationship with the state, or the fulfilment of
public duties, to the more contemporary concern
of justifying an individual’s avoidance of public
duties. Despite the breadth of this body of lit-
erature, an area remains understudied. And that
is the theorisation of citizenship’s futurism. The
former is an aspect to the philosophy of citizenship
which questions, among other areas, the future
directions of the normative values associated with
citizenship. Scholars (see for example Mossberger,
Tolbert & McNeal, 2007; Taylor-Gooby, 2008;
Isin & Nielsen, 2008; Rohrer, 2009) have certainly
been projecting normative arguments about what
Jean-Paul Gagnon
Australian Catholic University, Australia