Central to Siemerling’s impressive study of black Canadian writing is an optimism about the recuperative potential of historical knowledge. My contribution to the forum acknowledges that potential, while raising questions about the limits of such knowledge for addressing the persistence of racist ideologies and practices. My test case is Siemerling’s fine reading of Lawrence Hill’s novels.

When fertility centers dispose of embryos, how should this be done? Current regulatory guidelines by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority state that, when terminating the development of human embryos, a clinic should act with sensitivity, taking account of the embryo’s “special status” and respecting the interests of the gamete providers and recipients. As yet, it is unclear as to how and to what extent this achieved within fertility clinics in the UK. Resultantly, this paper examines the largely undocumented domain of embryo disposal practice. By undertaking an empirical study into policy and procedure and noting divergence in clinic practice, it then comments on the ethical implications of these protocols for patients and practitioners. Specifically, this paper argues for a more holistic approach to embryo disposal. An approach that effectively meets the requirements of the lab, is respectful of the “special status” of the human embryo, and, perhaps most importantly, reflects the multifaceted needs of the patient.

Although the concept of biobanking is not new, the open and evolving nature of biobanks has created profound ethical, legal, and social implications, including issues around informed consent, community engagement, secondary uses of materials over time, ownership of materials, data sharing, and privacy. Complexities also emerge because of increasing international collaborations and differing national positions. In addition, the degrees and topics of concern vary as legislative, ethical, and social frameworks differ across developed and developing countries. Implementing national laws in an internationally consistent manner is also problematic. However, these concerns should not cause countries, especially developing countries, to lag behind as this novel wave of research gains momentum, particularly while several biobank initiatives are already underway in the developing world. As the law has always struggled to keep up with the fast-evolving scientific arena, this article seeks to identify the ethico-legal frameworks in place in the United Kingdom, Australia, Uganda, and South Africa, for human biobank research, in an attempt to compare and contextualize the approaches to human biobanking in specific developed and developing countries.

This articles intervenes in current debates about the configuration of the contemporary literary system and argues that works coming from the intermediate formation of the semi-periphery can most lucidly register how neoliberalism has transformed the social, economic, and affective structures of the historical present. Drawing on postcolonial criticism, world-systems theory, and theories of combined and uneven development, I propose a comparative study of two novels originating from southern India and southern Italy, Vivek Shanbhag’s Ghachar Ghochar (2013) and Nicola Lagioia’s La Ferocia (2014). By analyzing how residual forces—patriarchy, gender violence, and familism—interact with processes of market neoliberalization and environmental destruction, this article further suggests that only the formal study of novels from semi-peripheral areas can problematize current critical paradigms based on binary oppositions (center/periphery, North/South). To do so, I develop a systemic approach that is attentive to how contextual specificities produce formal outcomes that can best diagnose global socioeconomic inequalities.

The article analyzes the recent ruling of the Italian Constitutional Court amending article 580 of the Italian Criminal Code, relating to aid and incitement to suicide. According to the first Assize Court of Milan, article 580, conceived in 1930, reflects the fascist culture of its author. The problem of the Constitutional Court was therefore to establish whether a democratic state can still place limits on aid for suicide and in what terms it can do so.

Ethical issues raised by the outbreak of COVID-19 have predominantly been addressed through a public health ethics lens. This article proposes that the rising COVID-19 fatalities and the World Health Organization’s failure to include palliative care as part of its guidance on how to maintain essential health services during the pandemic have exposed palliative care as an underlying global crisis. It therefore calls for a different ethical framework that includes a care ethics perspective and thereby addresses the ways in which the pandemic has triggered new difficulties in ensuring the delivery of appropriate end-of-life care for the dying. The article analyses the structural weaknesses of palliative care accentuated by the pandemic and proposes solutions that could set in motion lasting changes in the way it is delivered beyond COVID-19.

This response takes as its starting point the twofold agenda Winfried Siemerling pursues in The Black Atlantic Reconsidered: his systematic outline of a history of Black writing in Canada from the eighteenth century to the present and his goal to fill a geographical gap in Paul Gilroy’s influential concept of the Black Atlantic, thereby also offering a reconsideration of this concept. I suggest that, although Siemerling is clearly successful with regard to the first aspect, he is only partially so with regard to the second, with the logic of a nation-based literary history to some extent countering the agenda of the constitutive transnationality of the Black Atlantic. This tension between the two agendas, I suggest, results in crucial questions concerning the complex relationship among the national, the transnational, and the diasporic in the specific logic of literary histories.

Given a strong family history of early heart attacks, the future has always been an iffy proposition. Miraculously, I have bypassed the early off-ramps and find myself approaching 80, stents in place, considering the very real but previously unimaginable possibility of still more. But what kind of more? With dopamine on the wane and no longer supercharged by the push and shove of unbridled ambition and pride, bigger and grander are out of the question. Tired clichés poke through the widening cracks in my thinking to become uninvited bulletins of compromise and consolation. Be grateful. Relax, reminisce, enjoy sunsets, learn the backyard birds’ names, maybe even sing to them, and count blessings.

In this response to the incisive and stimulating discussions by Karina Vernon, Robert S. Levine, Barrington Walker, and Katja Sarkowsky of The Black Atlantic Reconsidered, I focus on the dynamic dimensions of Black Canadian and Black Atlantic time-spaces and temporalities, as well as issues of public, institutional, and pedagogical inclusion, incorporation, recognition, and transformation. In addition, questions of history and its uses, social aesthetics, and contrapuntal national/transnational frameworks are brought to the fore, often with reference to specific texts, to reflect on Black Canadian cultural achievement and its transnational and diasporic contexts both past and present.

Mackenzie Graham has made an important contribution to the literature on decisionmaking for patients with disorders of consciousness. He argues, and I agree, that decisions for unresponsive patients who are known to retain some degree of covert awareness ought to focus on current interests, since such patients likely retain the kinds of mental capacities that in ordinary life command our current respect and attention. If he is right, then it is not appropriate to make decisions for such patients by appealing to the values they had in the past, either the values expressed in an advance directive or the values recalled by a surrogate. There are two things I wish to add to the discussion. My first point is somewhat critical, for although I agree with his general conclusion about how, ideally, such decisions should be approached, I remain skeptical about whether his conclusion offers decisionmakers real practical help. The problem with these cases is that the evidence we have about the nature of the patient’s current interests is minimal or nonexistent. However—and this is important—Graham’s conclusion will be extremely relevant if in the future, our ability to communicate with such patients improves, as I hope it will. This leads to my second point. Graham’s conclusion illustrates a more general problem with our standard framework for decisionmaking for previously competent patients, a problem that has not been adequately recognized. So, in what follows, I explain the problem I see and offer some brief thoughts about solutions.

This paper works with methodologies offered by Winfried Siemerling’s The Black Atlantic Reconsidered (2015) to elaborate the complexities involved in conversations between the fields of Canadian Literature and Black Canadian cultural studies. As Siemerling argues, Black Canadian literature is marked by the transversal time-spaces of the Black Atlantic which run counter to linear national time. What are the implications, then, of the Black Atlantic’s incommensurable time-spaces in the ongoing project of institutionalizing Black Canadian literature?