Guiding Question: “From Frankenstein to the Visible Human Project, the body is continually reinterpreted as a limit to what it means to be human.” Discuss critically.
It is quite a challenging task to abstract reliable, useful sources from the masses and masses of useless, unreliable information that is on the internet. Choosing the right search engine (Google and Google Scholar were particularly useful) and picking out the key words from the guiding question to search with were the two most useful techniques I used to find the most reliable online sources. Iwan Rhys Morus’ Bodies/Machines, Andrea Gaggioli, Marco Vettorello and Giuseppe Riva’s From Cyborgs to Cyberbodies: The Evolution of the Concept of Techno-Body in Modern Medicine, Verana Kuni’s Mythical Bodies II, Catherine Waldby’s The Visible Human Project and Alison Caddick’s Feminism and Postmodernism: Donna Haraway’s Cyborg all contain a great deal of information that is helpful in answering the guiding question above. These sources provided a range of different viewpoints on the issue of the reinterpretation of the body, and some excellent examples of how the limit to what it is to be human has continually been adapted over time.
Iwan Rhys Morus’ online book abstract titled Bodies/Machines examines the way in which the body has been reinterpreted over time through its interactions with machines. Morus writes that the body “works both as a way of naturalizing machinery and of denaturalizing human beings. It provides a way of making technological society appear as a natural extension of the human body itself.”[1] Morus suggests in this book that the continual reinterpretation of the body as a limit to what it means to be human is ultimately a positive and natural one.
Morus’ work on the curiosity surrounding the limits of being human such as what he writes here, “we live in an age that is simultaneously fascinated by and terrified of the boundaries surrounding the human body and what happens (or might happen) there,”[2] is directly relevant to the same anxieties expressed in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and in criticism of the Visible Human Project (the two examples the guiding question uses).
Andrea Gaggioli, Marco Vettorello and Giuseppe Riva’s article, From Cyborgs to Cyberbodies: the Evolution of the Concept of Techno-Body in Modern Medicine investigates the way collective notions of the body have changed due to the incorporation of new technologies in modern medicine.[3] Of most interest in this article was its examination of the cyborg and the cyberbody. Through a discussion of the cyborg and cyberbody the authors conclude “that people no longer have a direct “sense of body”, but a mediated sense of body”[4].
Gaggioli, Vettorello and Riva’s article links the Visible Human Project with the work currently being done on Ambience Intelligence; they look to the future where patient’s bodies will be represented in virtual reality[5]. They also suggest through a post humanist perspective, that western industrialized societies are undergoing a new chapter of humanity “wherein no essential differences between bodily existence and computer stimulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot technology and human goals, exist […]”[6] This article comes to the conclusion that our bodies are continually being reinterpreted as a limit to what it means to be human and it is therefore very valuable to use when discussing the guiding question.
Verana Kuni’s article Mythical Bodies II is especially valuable because it draws on the examples of both the story of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the Visual Human Project, just as the guiding question of this task does. Kuni defines both of these subjects well, and suggests that in both cases the bodies of executed men have been allowed to live on, in either the case of being refashioned into a new creature (Doctor Frankenstein’s monster) or existing in virtual reality (the first body of the Visual Human Project) [7]. In this way, the human body has been reinterpreted, to be able to exist even after the soul of the person is dead [8]. This article provides a strong argument as to how the body has been interpreted in both instances, and how this has changed the parameters of what it means to be human.
Catherine Waldby’s online abstract of her book The Visible Human Project provides excellent coverage on the Visible Human Project. She speaks extensively on the background of the project and the identities of the “real-life” bodies[9]. Through this text we are able to acknowledge the Visible Human Project, as one of the latest ways the human body has been reinterpreted, and this is invaluable. Waldby also provides arguments for and against the reinterpretation of the body and speaks at length about the creation of virtual bodies, which are also helpful when answering the guiding question.[10]
Alison Caddick’s article Feminism and Postmodernism: Donna Haraway’s Cyborg contrasts the views of scholars Corea, Rowland, Firestone and Haraway on the view of bodies. Caddick’s definition of the body is very useful to use when unpacking the guiding question. She writes, “bodies are discursive or textual entities generally, the conventional products of particular historical circumstances”.[11] Caddick’s suggestion that the postmodern body is more fundamentally open to reinterpretation than any body before it as well as her suggestions as to why it has progressed this way are also integral points to consider.[12]
Caddick’s rather optimistic projection onto how she hopes bodies may exist in the future is also very relevant and interesting. She quotes Haraway who writes, ‘a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contrary standpoints”[13] this would be a great quote to include in an essay addressing the guiding question. The article, being written from a feminist perspective is also relevant, as an essay is often strongest when a wide variety of views on a topic are used.
Navigating the internet in search of reliable sources to answer the guiding question was a difficult task. Using the search engines Google and Google Scholar, and choosing the right key words from the question were helpful ways of sifting through the masses of information that is on the internet. The quality of the information which can be found on the internet such as that from Iwan Rhys Morus’ Bodies/Machines, Andrea Gaggioli, Marco Vettorello and Giuseppe Riva’s From Cyborgs to Cyberbodies: The Evolution of the Concept of Techno-Body in Modern Medicine, Verana Kuni’s Mythical Bodies II, Catherine Waldby’s The Visible Human Project and Alison Caddick’s Feminism and Postmodernism: Donna Haraway’s Cyborg, surprised me. These sources would be very helpful to use in answering the guiding question, they contained a number of valuable examples and viewpoints on the issue of body reinterpretation and how the limit to what it is to be human has been redefined over time.
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