ABSTRACT
Bioethics is a term that ranges over a rather diverse set of people, institutions, practices and areas of inquiry, and therefore speaking generally about bioethics introduces its own problems. This chapter briefly traces the development of speculative bioethics in relation to different modes of bioethics discourse, highlighting the key changes that have taken place over the past three decades. It then offers an analysis of the current state of speculative discourse, and argues that the dominant discursive mode of engagement, here termed 'anticipatory ethics', is problematic and of dubious value. The chapter also argues that bioethics' engagement with speculative futures can be justified and constructive in theory, but would need to combine resources already found within bioethics with others that it has yet to develop. The model of speculative bioethics is better attuned to the unpredictability of scientific progress and sensitive to the nature and function of sociotechnical imaginaries.
