Livelli di corporeita': una metafora dell'identita' europea?

This paper will explore two often connected situations, in which a wave of the ‘juridical magic wand’ – the magic of juridical definitions – excludes the subject-of-the-body from decisions relating to its biological materials, taking away its decision-making power over same. The first concerns the process whereby, through the so-called anonymisation of biological materials, said materials are made available for the secondary uses that science and industry may employ them for. The second concerns the construction of the concept of a work of biological/genetic invention through the criteria of isolation and purification of biological materials for the purposes of patentability, a process which also removes the bodily materials from the control of their subject. ‘Anonymisation’ and ‘isolation-and-purification‘ are two interesting cases of scientific-juridical hybrid concepts – constructs in which scientific data and legal qualifications mix together giving life to new interpretative categories. The new destinies of corporeity, refashioned by science, the market and the law, show up the inadequacy of the argument which states that an irreconcilable conflict, a culture clash, exists between the language, the methods and the aims of science and the law