The Third World Body Commodified Essay Sample free essay sample

This essay offers a reading of Indian author Manjula Padmanabhan’s dystopian drama Harvest ( 1997 ) in order to analyze the trade in human variety meats and the commoditization of the 3rd universe organic structure that such a trade is predicated upon. Padmanabhan’s drama. in which an unemployed Indian adult male sells the rights to his organic structure parts to a purchaser in the United States. pointedly critiques the commoditization of the healthy third-world organic structure. which. thanks to important progresss in transplant medical specialty. has now become a bank of trim parts for ailing organic structures in the first universe. Describing this phenomenon as a instance of ‘neo-cannibalism’ . anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes ( 1998. p. 14 ) notes that wealthy but ailing patients in the first-world are progressively turning to healthy if destitute populations of the third-world in order to secure ‘spare’ organic structure parts. It is alluring. at first glimpse. to read this illicit planetary economic system as yet another illustration of the development of third-world organic structures that planetary capitalist economy gives rise to. We will write a custom essay sample on The Third World Body Commodified Essay Sample or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Scheper-Hughes herself suggests that the trade in human variety meats is best understood in the context of planetary capitalist economy when she points out that the planetary circuit of variety meats mirrors the circuit of capital flows in the epoch of globalization: ‘from South to North. from Third to First universe. from hapless to rich. from black and brown to white’ ( 2002. p. 197 ) . And yet. as I argue in my essay. the human organ can non be equated with other objects produced in the third-world for first-world ingestion because the organ is non a merchandise of the laboring third-world organic structure. Unlike the trade good exported from an exploitatory third-world sweatshop. the organ is non produced by the third-world organic structure but extracted from it. The organ’s peculiar feature as a merchandise that requires no labor in order to bring a monetary value provides the key to understanding why third-world populations are progressively willing to be preyed upon by first-world organ purchasers. Many theoreticians composing about planetary capitalist economy today have pointed out that first-world economic systems are progressively reliant non on production but ingestion ( Harvey. 2000. Bauman. 1998. and Hardt and Negri. 2004 ) . The work force of the first-world is of all time more disengaged from industrial labor and industry either because. in the aftermath of technological progresss. such labor is carried out by non-human agencies. or instead. because human labor is obtained elsewhere. In their thrust to multiply net incomes. first-world economic systems rely on production sites where labor is ‘cheaper. less self-asserting. less taxed. more feminised [ and ] less protected by provinces and unions’ ( Comaroff and Comaroff. 2000. p. 295 ) . Typically located in the third-world. such production sites displace human labor to remote geographical locations. leting for industrial production to go progressively less seeable in the first-world. The first-world. on th e other manus. sees a proliferation of service-economies. economic systems which rely on consumers to buy progressively non-material trade goods. Yet organ trade does non purely correspond to this planetary economic form. The organ is so a stuff good originating in the third-world. but it is non the merchandise of labor. It is. instead. a merchandise that can be sold without the outgo of labor. while assuring to bring forth ‘wealth without production. value without effort’ ( Comaroff and Comaroff. 2000. p. 313 ) . Undreamt-of sums of money with small to no labor: this is the peculiar promise that organ sale extends to the impoverished and disenfranchised populations of the third-world. In order to understand the frequently resistless enticement of this promise. we must research non the transmutation in the conditions of capitalist production. but instead the transmutation in the societal complex numbers of the labouring hapless. Jean and John Comaroff theorise merely this transmutation. Harmonizing to the Comaroffs. capitalist economy today presents itself to the laboring hapless in a millennian. messianic signifier. publicizing itself as ‘a Gospel of redemption ; [ as ] a capitalis t economy that. if justly harnessed. is invested with the capacity entirely to transform the existence of the marginalised and the disempowered’ ( 2000. p. 292 ) . Therefore. the key to understanding millennian capitalist economy lies in the peculiar trade name of seduction upon which it operates. This seductiveness. they argue. is most visibly manifested in the unprecedented proliferation of ‘occult economies’ in the third-world ( 2000. p. 312 ) . The Comaroffs cite non merely organ trade as an illustration of these occult economic systems. but besides the sale of services such as fortune-telling. or the development of tourer industries bases on the sighting of monsters ( 2000. p. 310 ) . Occult economic systems are characterised by the fact that they respond to the temptingness of ‘accruing wealth from nothing’ ( Comaroff and Comaroff. 2000. p. 313 ) . In other words. supernatural economic systems are animated by the same inclination that motivates wealthaccruing actions like chancing or guess on the stock market. It is within this millennian context that we need to understand the determination of the organ-seller to ship on the sale of her organ and seek out the supernatural economic system of the variety meats market. The organ-seller’s voluntary determination is brought on by that set of contradictory emotions. hope and desperation. that millennian capitalist economy and its supernatural economic systems unleash upon their marks. Despair. because the proprietor of a healthy organ is immiserated. hapless and hopelessly excluded from capitalism’s promise of planetary prosperity. Hope. because millennian capitalism’s supernatural economic systems hold out the promise of a speedy hole to this status by showing a new. quasimagical agencies of doing adequate money to get the better of poorness. Making money. This is the promise that the occult economic system of organ trade extends to its objects: sell your organ and you will do more money than you will of all time gain through old ages of labor and labor. The promise of millennian capitalist economy works because it allows the third-world person to see her organic structure as that which contains a natural ‘spare’ por tion. a of course happening excess that is non the merchandise of labour yet is still in high demand. The third-world person is therefore organic structure has a ‘spare’ of – a kidney. a cornea – in order to work out all her pecuniary jobs. The organ hence emerges as a really curious sort of trade good: 1 that is non produced by a drudging human organic structure. but instead extracted from it. What sort of trade good. so. is the organ? Indeed. is it a trade good at all? It is informative to turn here to Karl Marx’s treatment of a peculiar sort of trade good: 1 that has a use-value. and therefore carry through a demand. yet no value. insofar as it is non the merchandise of labor. 1 Marx’s primary illustration of such a trade good. which he discusses in the 3rd volume of Capital. is land. Marx recognises that there are assorted manners of production originating from land. but he chooses to concentrate on the peculiar instance of agricultural production. where the farmer-capitalist rentals a certain sum of land. and pays the proprietor of this land a fixed amount of money every month in the signifier of rent. Parenthetically. he adds that ‘instead of agribusiness. we might every bit hold taken excavati on. since the Torahs are the same’ ( 1991. p. 752 ) . The phrase is implicative. because both instances. agribusiness and excavation. affect the extraction of something from the land. We might easy include the human organic structure in the same class. In the scenario I explore here. the organic structure. like land. is mined for its variety meats. and. as the rubric of the drama I discuss below suggests. variety meats are removed. harvested. from the organic structure. Marx’s treatment of land as a trade good offers yet farther penetrations into the trade in human organic structure parts. In Capital III. he explicitly states that to talk of land as holding value is ‘prima facie irrational [ †¦ ] . since the Earth In Capital I. Marx explains that a trade good has both a qualitative and a quantitative facet. The commodity’s use-value resides in its qualitative facet: ‘The utility of a thing makes it a use-value. But this utility does non swing in mid-air. It is conditioned by the physical belongingss of the trade good. and has no being apart from the latter. [ †¦ ] Use-values are merely realised in usage or ingestion. [ †¦ ] In the signifier of society to be considered here [ read. the capitalist manner of production ] they [ use-values ] are besides the stuff carriers of [ †¦ ] exchange-value’ ( 1990. p. 126 ) . Exchange-value. says Marx. is the quantitative dimension of the trade good ; it is â⠂¬Ëœthe proportion in which use-values of one sort exchange for use-values of another kind’ ( 1990. p. 126 ) . However. Marx argues. the belongings that renders two trade goods commensurable is the fact that they both contain a common component. This common component is value. or the measure of abstract human labor objectified within a given trade good. Exchange-value is therefore ‘the necessary manner of look. or signifier of visual aspect. of value’ and emerges as such under the conditions of capitalist economy ( 1990. p. 128 ) . is non a merchandise of labor. and therefore does non hold a value’ ( 1991. p. 760 ) . And yet. as Marx recognises. the fact remains that land has a monetary value. a moneysum for which it can be exchanged. We might add here that the organ. excessively. fetches a monetary value without being a merchandise of labor. From whence so. does this monetary value originate? To this inquiry Marx provides a really unequivocal reply: [ T ] he monetary values of things that have no value in and of themselves – either non being merchandises of labor. like land. or which can non be reproduced by labour [ †¦ ] – may be determined by rather causeless combinations of fortunes. For a thing to be sold. it merely has to be capable of being monopolised and alienated ( 1991. p. 772. accent added ) . Capitalist production. argues Marx. develops exactly by virtuousness of its ability to monopolize and estrange the particular. natural belongingss of use-values without value. such as land. Therefore. the sale of land might look. superficially. to be similar to the sale of a produced trade good. However. they have different theoretical positions ( Foley. 1986. p. 28 ) . As Duncan Foley explains: If we want to understand value dealingss in trade good production. we should center our attending foremost of all on conditions of production. on factors such as labour productiveness. If we want to understand value dealingss affecting nonproduced things. we should look. non to production. but to the rights involved in ownership of these things and to the bargaining places these rights give to their owners ( 1986. p. 28-9. accent added ) . It is thanks to the societal phenomenon of landed belongings that land is able to command a fixed. agreed-upon money-sum. in the signifier of rent if the land is leased. and in the signifier of a monetary value if it is sold. The legal impression of landed belongings efficaciously alienates certain parts of land and decrees them as the sole ownership of a given person. As Marx puts it: [ T ] he legal construct [ of private belongings ] itself means nil more than that the landholder can act in relation to the land merely as any trade good proprietor can with his trade goods ( 1991. p. 753 ) . Landed belongings therefore renders land into an alienable. monopolisable good in the ownership of a given person who can now sell it.As the work of Lawrence Cohen ( 2002 ) shows us. the organ. excessively. has been rendered alienable. Cohen argues that biomedical progresss in transplant medical specialty have led to the possibility non merely of pull outing and reassigning an organ from one individual to another: more significantly. these progresss have created a much larger pool of both potentially utile variety meats and compatible receivers likewise. This ‘fortuitous combination of circumstances’ . to cite Marx ( 1991. p. 772 ) . consequences from the development of extremely effectual immunosuppressor drugs such as cyclosporine. The development of cyclosporine. Cohen provinces. efficaciously means that patients expecting kidney grafts are no longer dependent on kidneys that match their ain tissue types ( 2002 ) . Theoretically. so. it is extremely likely that anyone wishing to sell their ‘spare’ organ will easy happen a purchaser for it. for immunosuppressant drugs greatly cut down the opportunities that the organ will be rejected by its new proprietor. The reaching of cyclosporine. as Cohen puts it. ‘ [ has ] allow [ ed ] specific subpopulations to go â€Å"same enough† for their members to be surgically disaggregated and their parts reincorporated’ ( 2002. p. 12 ) . If. as Marx says. a thing needs simply to be monopolisable and alienable in order to be sold. so the planetary black market in variety meats shows that this procedure is good underway in the instance of organic structure parts. 2 Much more fraught. nevertheless. is the inquiry of what it means to have one’s organic structure and the variety meats that comprise it. Land ceases to be a free resource for all one time a given province espouses the impression of private belongings upon which capitalist economy is founded. An organ. nevertheless. is ever the ownership of a given person. who. theoretically talking. is hence entitled to sell it. should she so choose. And yet the statute law adopted by most states of the universe. explicitly forbiding the trade in human organic structure parts. proves otherwise. Catherine Waldby and Robert Mitchell argue that if. along with the United States. Canada. Australia and New Zealand. no state in Western Europe has every bit yet legalised the sale and purchase of human organic structure tissues. this is due to the fact that most politicians and bioethicists in these states uphold the human organic structure as ‘the venue of absolute self-respect [ †¦ ] . [ This ] [ vitamin D ] ignity is destroyed if any portion of the organic structure is assigned a market value and rendered alienable’ ( 2006. p. 19 ) . Mentioning Paul Rabinow. Waldby and Mitchell explain that such an apprehension of self-respect as an unalienable human right is derived from Kant’s differentiation between self-respect and monetary value: In the land of terminals everything has either a monetary value or a self-respect. Whatever has a monetary value can be replaced by something else as its equivalent ; on the other manus. whatever is above all monetary value. and hence admits of no equivalent. has a self-respect. ( Kant. 1981. p. 40. cited in Waldby and Mitchell. 2006. p. 19 ) The most searching reviews of the commoditization. be it illicit or legalised. of human organic structure parts. spring from a similar construct of the self-respect of the human organic structure. Nancy Scheper-Hughes ( 2000 ) describes organ market proposals as being founded upon useful and neo-liberal principals that systematically undermine the cardinal self-respect of the human organic structure. Furthermore. these libertarian statem ents emphasize the right of every person to take whether or non to sell what she owns. However. as Scheper-Hughes points out. the really thought of pick becomes debatable in most third-world contexts: Bio-ethical statements about the right to sell are based on EuroAmerican impressions of contract and single ‘choice’ . But societal and economic contexts make the ‘choice’ to sell a kidney in an urban slum of Calcutta or in a Brazilian favela anything but a ‘free’ and ‘autonomous’ one ( 2001. [ n. p. ] ) . The balance of this essay discusses Harvest. a drama which. I shall reason. launches a scathing review of the variety meats market and of the planetary. marauding capitalist economy that consequences in the commoditization of the third-world organic structure. Indian author Manjula Padmanabhan’s 1997 drama confronts us with a futuristic Bombay of the twelvemonth 2010. a clip when legal. moral and bioethical arguments about organ gross revenues and grafts have been overcome. The trade in human variety meats is now to the full institutionalised and swimmingly operated by the entity incarnating all the predatory forces of planetary capitalist economy: a multinational corporation named Interplanta Services. The dramatis personae. Padmanabhan’s phase waies tell us. is divided into two chief groups dwelling of Third World givers and First World receiving systems. Although Padmanabhan chooses. ‘ [ f ] or the interest of coherence’ . to do the givers Indian and the receiving systems North American. her phase waies emphasise that: the givers and receiving systems should take on the racial individualities. names. costumes and speech patterns most suited to the location of production. It matters merely that there be a extremely recognizable differentiation between the two groups. reflected in address. vesture and visual aspect ( 1997. p. 217 ) . The play’s futuristic scene allows Padmanabhan to deploy a series of sci-fi appliances on phase. Their intent. I argue. is to alarm us to the important function that engineering dramas in both seducing and patroling the third-world givers into entry. It is thanks to one such sci-fi appliance that we see the first-world receiving system and organ buyer Ginny. whose organic structure is neer present on phase. but seeable merely on a screen suspended from the ceiling. The four Indian givers belong to the same family: Om ; his married woman Jaya ; Om’s female parent. referred to merely as Ma ; and Om’s younger brother. Jeetu. While Padmanabhan uses her donor characters to interrogate the peculiar fortunes that make the option of selling one’s organic structure parts so seductive. finally. I contend. she upholds the Kantian thought of human self-respect which views the merchandising of one’s organic structure parts as a misdemeanor of human unity. When the drama opens. Jaya and her mother-in-law are impatiently waiting for Om’s return from his occupation interview. Both are antsy: Ma fierily hopes that Om will acquire the occupation ; Jaya. cognizing what the occupation entails. hopes that he will non. But Om returns to denote that he has so been selected for the ‘job’ at Interplanta Services. Having passed the medical trials at Interplanta. he has been decreed an eligible. healthy campaigner for selling the rights to his full organic structure to an anon. purchaser in the United States. His baffled feelings about subscribing such a contract allow Padmanabhan to portray the complex mixture of hope and desperation that has motivated his actions. At first. he verges on the enraptured: ‘We’ll have more money than you and I have names for! ’ he says to Ma. proudly. ‘Who’d believe there’s so much money in the universe? ’ ( 1997. p. 219 ) . When his married woman exp resses her reserves for what he has done. he becomes defensive: You think I did it lightly. But [ †¦ ] we’ll be rich! Very rich! Insanely rich! But you’d instead unrecorded in this one little room. I suppose! Think it’s such a all right thing – life twenty-four hours in. twenty-four hours out. like monkeys in a hot-case – lulled to kip by our neighbours’ rhythmic flatus! [ †¦ ] And starvation ( 1997. p. 223 ) . When Jaya accuses him of doing the incorrect pick. he is inexorable that his determination was non made of his ain free will:Om: I went because I lost my occupation at the company. And why did I lose it? Because I am a clerk and cipher demands clerksany longer! There are no new occupations now – there’s nil left for people like us! Don’t you know that?Jaya: You’re incorrect. there are picks – there must be picks – Om: Huh! I didn’t choose. I stood in waiting line and was chosen! And if non this waiting line. there would hold been other waiting lines – [ †¦ ] ( 1997. p. 238 ) Om’s insisting that his function in the choice process was wholly inactive allows Padmanabhan to review the broad discourse of free will and pick that advocates organ markets on the footing of single liberty. She suggests that it is exactly this discourse which creates the economic construction of millennian capitalist economy in which the merchandising of variety meats becomes an ‘option’ for the disfranchised third-world person. As Om’s concluding reaction makes clear. his opinion has been badly impaired by the enticement of limitless wealth. When the world of what he has done hits him. he is terrified: ‘How could I have done this to myself? What kind of sap am I? ’ ( 1997. p. 234 ) Om’s female parent. nevertheless. expresses no such sorrow. Upon first hearing her son’s promises of impossible wealths. Ma is mystified: ‘What sort of occupation wages a adult male to sit at place? ’ ( 1997. p. 220 ) . As she begins to understand what Om’s ‘job’ entails. she resumes her questions as though she can non believe their good luck: ‘Tell me once more: all you have to make is sit at place and remain healthy? [ †¦ ] And they’ll wage you? [ †¦ ] Even if you do nil but pick your nose all twenty-four hours? ’ ( 1997. p. 222 ) . By demoing Ma’s continued astonishment at the fact that her boy will be paid to make perfectly nil. Padmanabhan is able to picture the extent to which the forces of millennian capitalist economy appear to supply a quasi-magical agency of doing money. By Act II of the drama. Ma has become wholly addicted to their new life of luxury. The household family is littered with a n array of appliances that Ginny has provided in order to entertain the givers and maintain them comfy. and Ma spends most of her clip obsessively watching telecasting on the synergistic set that Ginny has sent them. She becomes the perfect receiver of Ginny’s gifts as she dismisses Om’s remorse and progressively seeks to get away the world of her life in Bombay through technological devices. By the terminal of the drama. she has locked herself off into what Padmanabhan footings a VideoCouch. a capsule into which Ma can stop up herself. watch one of 150 telecasting channels. and non worry about nutrient or digestion because the unit is wholly self-sufficing. The amenitiess with which Ginny so volitionally provides her seduce Ma into an astonied contentment at their sudden reversal of lucks. Surrendering to the joys of technologically-induced cloud nine. Ma is thrilled that. for literally executing no labor at all. ‘they will be rich for of all time and ever’ ( 1997. p. 235 ) . Not all the hi-tech devices that Ginny delivers to the givers are designed to featherbed the organic structure. nevertheless. In the really first scene of the drama. shortly after Om’s return with a new ‘job’ . representatives of Interplanta Services. his new employers. flatboat into the donors’ place to put in a series of appliances. As Om. Jaya and Ma ticker. they dismantle the family’s fundamental kitchen and replace it with their ain cookery device and jars incorporating motley nutrient pellets. They so put in a Contact Module. a device that hangs from the ceiling and which looks. Padmanabhan tells us. like a ‘white. faceted globe’ ( 1997. p. 221 ) . Each clip the device springs to life. Ginny. the American who has purchased Omâ€℠¢s organic structure. is able to do contact with the donor household. I wish to brood at length on the sci-fi appliance that is the contact faculty. What interactions between the givers and the receiving system does the contact faculty license? And what does this device let Padmanabhan to accomplish on phase? Let us get down with this latter inquiry. Ginny communicates with the giver household merely through the contact faculty. She is therefore neer physically present on the phase. a fact that is extremely important because Padmanabhan’s chosen genre – theater – is explicitly concerned with a touchable. embodied and physical presence on phase. Yet throughout the drama. Ginny is merely of all time seeable in two-dimensions. on the screen of the contact faculty. The lone corporal performing artists on the phase are the racially and visually distinguishable organic structures of the third-world givers. Therefore. the audience has no pick but to stare on a organic structure whose sheer presence on phase challenges the supposed farness of the labouring and now cannibalised organic structure. the really organic structure that capitalist production in the epoch of globalization has displaced into the distant third-world. Furthermore. the contact-module allows Padmanabhan to set up a construction of staring and surveillance that mirrors the function of the audience. For. like the receiving system. the audience excessively. regards at the lone physical organic structures on phase: the givers. The audience is therefore impelled into an uncomfortable designation with the receiving system. the really entity who is responsible for the objectification of third-world organic structures that the drama so overtly criticises. Keeping the first-world receiver’s organic structure remote serves a 2nd intent. It allows Padmanabhan to signal to the profound tensenesss underlying the predatory relationship between givers and receiving systems. The True. this state of affairs would be well different if the drama were performed in a third-world state. The third-world organic structures on phase would be more familiar to the audience. whereas the first-world American character would be seeable in the same manner as the bulk of third-world audiences are already accustomed to from telecasting. film and magazines: in two dimensions. However. Padmanabhan has herself admitted that. frustrated by the deficiency of chances for English-language dramatists in India. she originally wrote Harvest for production in the first-world. when she entered the drama for ( and subsequently won ) the inaugural Onassis Prize for Theatre ( Gilbert. 2001. p. 214 ) . Yet. on the other manus. the third-world organic structure produces in its new proprietor. the first-world receiving system. a profound anxiousness. For like the receiver’s ain organic structure. the donor’s organic structure excessively is vulnerable to the invasion of disease and devolution that must be kept at bay at all costs. First. so. the contact faculty enables Ginny to step in in the donor universe without holding to put pes in the geographical location that the givers inhabit. Nor would she desire it any other manner. She has purchased the rights to Om’s variety meats in order to fend off disease and decease and has no purpose of put on the lining a visit to their unhygienic homes. Second. the contact faculty allows Ginny to patrol the day-to-day wonts of the givers in order to guarantee that the variety meats that will one twenty-four hours be hers remain healthy excessively. Therefore. gaining. after the first visit. that Om’s household portions a lavatory with 40 other households. Ginny reacts with horror. ‘It’s wrong’ . she exclaims. ‘It’s disgusting! And I – good. I’m traveling to alter that. I can’t accept that. I mean. it’s insanitary! ’ ( 1997. p. 225 ) . Consequently. Interplanta is commissioned to put in a lavatory in their place that really same twenty-four hours. The regular monitoring that the contact faculty permits is rendered even more effectual given that merely the receiving system is able to run it at will. Om’s household neer knows when Ginny will ‘visit’ them following. By the gap of Act II of the drama. we see how good her scheme is working. Two months have elapsed. and Om is panicking because they are late for tiffin. ( Lunch. of class. consists of the motley nutritionary pellets provided for them by Interplanta Services. ) ‘You know how [ Ginny ] hates it when we’re tardily to eat’ . Om says. worriedly ( 1997. p. 228 ) . The contact faculty therefore allows the receiving system to set up a lasting construction of surveillance in Om’s place. Fearing Ginny’s reproof. or worse. a revoking of his contract. Om urges his full household to patrol their ain behavior. The co ntact faculty inculcates self-discipline. rendering the donors’ bodies into perfect sites of ‘docility-utility’ . optimum sites. in other words. from which to pull out the healthiest possible organ ( Foucault. 1995. pp. 135-169 ) . Ginny is careful. nevertheless. to supply the givers with plentifulness of amenitiess to counterbalance them for their attempts. When the drape lifts for Act II of the drama. the phase reveals that. a mere two months subsequently. the donors’ family is to the full equipped with an air-conditioning unit. a mini-gym and a glimmer. fully-equipped kitchen ( 1997. p. 227 ) . Ginny reminds the household that by featherbeding them so. she is merely carry throughing her ain contractual duties: ‘I acquire to give you things you’d neer acquire in your life-time. and you get to give me. well†¦ possibly my life’ ( 1997. p. 230 ) . Ginny’s insouciant sentence serves as a jolting and upseting reminder that receiving systems and givers barely trade in equivalents: Ginny provides ‘things’ for which the givers pay her dorsum in their ain lives. In fact. Ginny’s continual gifts sum to little more than mere investing. As she says to the household. falsifying the pronunciation of Om’s name:The Most Important Thing is to maintain Auwm smiling. Coz if Auwm’s smiling. it means his organic structure is smiling and if his organic structure is smiling it means his variety meats are smiling. And that’s the sort of variety meats that’ll survive a graft best. smiling organs†¦ ( 1997. p. 229 ) Reading the receiver’s actions as an investing permits us to return. one time once more. to the analogues between the human organic structure and land that the play’s rubric. Harvest. alludes to. The term efficaciously assimilates the whole human organic structure. from which the portion is extracted. to a crop-producing secret plan of land. and therefore. by extension. to the possibility that land seaports of bring forthing life. The extractible human organic structure portion is consequently assimilated to the output or harvest ; this is the trade good with echt use-value. the portion that it is profitable to detach from the whole. In order to obtain the best possible crop. as Ginny is well-aware. one must non merely choose the best possible site in which to put: one must keep a continued investing in this site. Quality input will bring forth quality end product: viz. . a healthy crop. The workability of the analogy I present here is. nevertheless. limited. An ideal agricultural economic system is sustainable. The organ. one time extracted. is irredeemable. This. nevertheless. affairs small to the receiving system. who sees the organic structures of the donor universe as disposable organic structures comprised of spare parts she can utilize to protract her ain life. And yet. while all the givers fall quarry to Ginny’s tactics. Padmanabhan uses Jaya. the lone character in the drama who is virulently opposed to Om’s determination. to repossess a human self-respect of kinds. a self-respect that allows Jaya to defy the enticement of money and the seductive escape of engineering. It is a self-respect that is predicated. I contend. on the very restrictions of the physical organic structure that the receiving systems are so despairing to get the better of. The concluding scene of the drama sees merely Jaya on phase. Om has abandoned her. holding willfully chosen to seek out Ginny and give up his organic structure to her. Ma is plugged into her VideoCouch. unmindful to her milieus. Jaya awakes to an unfamiliar. discorporate voice coming from the contact faculty. This is Virgil. yet another American receiving system with designs to feed upon Jaya’s organic structure. Jaya. nevertheless. garbages to negociate with Virgil every bit long as he attempts to draw the strings from his safe. disease-free environment in the first-world. She is determined to put down her ain conditions. If Virgil wants her organic structure. he must come to her in individual. ‘I know you’re stronger than me. you’re richer than me. But if you want me. ’ she insists. ‘you must put on the line your tegument for me’ ( 1997. p. 248 ) . Boasting that she can non win against him. Virgil sends his Interplanta employees to interrupt down Jaya’s door. But Jaya has discovered ‘a new definition for winning. Wining by losing’ ( 1997. p. 248. accent added ) . She announces to Virgil that she plans to repossess the ‘only thing [ she ] ha [ s ] which is still [ her ] ain: [ her ] death’ ( 1997. p. 248 ) . Therefore. Jaya resists Virgil’s progresss and retains her ain self-respect in one Swift shot: she embraces the really mortality that Virgil and his fellow receiving systems seek to eliminate from their ain organic structures. ‘I’m keeping a piece of glass against my throat’ . she warns an progressively frustrated Virgil ( 1997. p. 248 ) . The drama concludes on this unso lved note. While Virgil weighs his options. Jaya threatens ( promises? ) to repossess her ain organic structure through self-destruction. Padmanabhan therefore leaves us to chew over a sobering inquiry: is a triumph that requires the decease of the exploited mark of millennian capitalist economy truly worthy of being termed an act of opposition? Harvest poses a powerful review of the first-world’s development of third-world organic structures for the trade goods of labour-power and. as the late emerged trade in variety meats shows. wellness. Should third-world persons resist such commoditization? Indeed. can they? While oppositions of organ markets embrace human self-respect as an unalienable right that no person should hold to release. the black market in human variety meats continues to be the lone solution for those who have no other assets to sell. In this context. Padmanabhan’s impression of ‘winning by losing’ seems a disturbingly disposed manner to specify the third-world individual’s quandary: lose your ain body-part to win the hard currency. Bibliography Bauman. Z. . 1998. ‘Ageing and the Sociology of Embodiment’ . in G. Scrambler and P. Higgs ( explosive detection systems ) . Modernity. Medicine and Health: Medical Sociology towards 2000. New York: Routledge. pp. 216-33. Cherry. M. . 2005. Kidney for Sale by Owner. Washington. D. C. : Georgetown University Press. Cohen. L. . 2002. ‘The Other Kidney: Biopolitics beyond Recognition’ . in N. Scheper-Hughes and L. Wacquant ( explosive detection systems ) . Commodifying Bodies.London: Sage. pp. 9-31.Comaroff. Jean and Comaroff. 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