Critically Annotated Webliography QU: 2

“From ‘Frankenstein’ to ‘The Visible Human Project’, the body is continually reinterpreted as a limit to what it means to be human.” Discuss critically.

In order to deliver an accurate response to this task it is necessary to establish a universal understanding of the concepts of ‘body’ and ‘human’. The Cambridge online dictionary (CoD) defines ‘body’ as the ‘whole physical structure that forms a person or animal’ (CoD accessed 26.08.08, 11.32). In addition, the concise definition of ‘human’ is ‘a man, woman or child...typical of people’ (CoD accessed 26.08.08, 11.35). Detailing the body as the ‘physical structure’ of an individual eliminates a vast array of alternative elements that equally contribute to the creation of a human. Neglecting such aspects as the soul and internal being ensures that the notion of body limits the conception of a human. Furthermore the physical element of a body should no longer be identified as the sole descriptive of a human as exemplified by ‘The Visible Human Project’. One does not need to be in possession of a physical being in order to be labelled a human as Joseph Paul Jernigan’s digitalised statistics confirm.

In concurrence with the notion of the physical being as unnecessary are Nettleton and Watson with their text ‘The Body in Everyday Life’ (1998). The two academics suggest that the body is becoming ‘reconceptualised’ (1998:5) and is retracting from its state of fixity within nature. It is apparently emerging as a boundary concept, bridging the dichotomy of physical and technological. Thus the text suggests that the only viable entity to satisfy the role of such a combiner is Donna Haraway’s cyborg, defined as a ‘hybrid of machine and organism’ (1998:5). Giddens (as cited in Nettleton and Watson 1998) supports the theory of a changing bodily form. He argues that the body was once ‘a given (1998:6) in that there was a standardised limited conception. However individuals’ bodies are now items readily available for transformation thus not limiting to the notion of human, as both bodies and humans can be reconstituted into diverse formations.

Furthering the theme of bodies being constructed into varying, non-natural forms is the contemporary exemplar of Thomas Beatie the ‘pregnant man’ (The Times March 26 2008). The Times online covered the story of transgendered man Beatie whose body was previously that of a woman. Through scientific intervention Beatie was able to emancipate himself from the constrictions of his female body and obtain a sense of self assurance as a male. Further scientific phenomena enabled Beatie to artificially inseminate himself due to his retention of female reproductive organs. Thus emerges a pregnant man. Such a story raises copious debate surrounding the ethics of artificial insemination; humans can now be partly created external to the body. Thus is the body edging towards gradual extinction? In direct relation to the focal issue of this essay the body does appear to provide limitations in being human. From an alternative perspective one can assess the relation of body to feeling human which in turns constitutes being human. One could argue that for Beatie, feeling human was synonymous with actively participating in society in the body that felt natural; his female body didn’t feel natural. Thus for Beatie to feel human, therefore be human it was necessary to transcend the limitations of his physical being.

An alternative source is that written by Gane (2006), entitled ‘When we have never been human, what is to be done?: Interview with Donna Haraway’. The interview includes details on the three boundary breakdowns discussed in ‘The Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’ (Haraway 1984). In relation to the afore mentioned idea of transcending the boundaries of one’s body, Haraway identifies how it is possible to collapse the boundaries between humans and separate entities such as animals and machines thus defying the notion of bodily limitations. Haraway argues that with the concept of the cyborg she attempted to ‘rethink species’ (2006:144) thus the mergence of humans with animals, machines and with the binary of physical versus non-physical. Thus it could be argued that there are not limitations with the body in terms of it restricting the nature of being human, yet perhaps there are errors within the definition of human.

Finally, continuing with Haraway’s theme of eliminating the boundary between human and machine is Leaver’s article ‘“Your appeal to my humanity is pointless”: the Borg and Radical Performativity in Star Trek’ (2002). Leaver argues how the Borg Queen’s torso and head detached from her lower body is a challenge to the ‘coherence and borders of the human body’ (2002). Traditional human bodies are that of a complete organic being, however if we are all cyborgs as Haraway claims then perhaps alternative notions of what it is to be human need to be considered? Is the boundary between organic and technological realms increasingly blurred?

Thus in conclusion, it can be identified that the body does prove to be limiting in terms of attaining complete humanity however such limitations can be transcended within the modern technological era, exemplified by the transgendered pregnant man. With such ability for transcendence it could be suggested that the definition of human needs to be reconsidered in order to correlate with the ever developing social and scientific world.

Reference List
Bone, J. (March 26 2008) ‘Thomas Beatie, a married man who used to be a woman, is pregnant with a baby girl’. The Times online.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3628860.ece (Accessed 27.08.08, 9.48.)

Gane, N. (2006) ‘When we have never been human, what is to be done?: Interview with Donna Haraway’. Theory, Culture, Society 23, 7-8, 135-158.
http://tcs.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/23/7-8/135 (Accessed 26.08.08, 13.56.)

Leaver, T. (2002) ‘“Your appeal to my humanity is pointless”: the Borg and Radical Performativity in Star Trek’. Outskirts: feminisms along the edge 9. http://www.chloe.uwa.edu.au/outskirts/archive/volume9/leaver (Accessed 25.08.08, 15.45.)

Nettleson, S. and Watson, T. (1998) The Body in Everyday Life. New York: Routledge.
http://books.google.com/books?id=m8_u-v4knKQC&pg=PA2&lpg=PA1&ots=23CHeFxWRw&dq=Forms+of+Technological+Embodiment:+Reading+the+Body+in+Contemporary+Culture&lr=&sig=ACfU3U0l8qtg77qy_BgiV3z5LWNBsOCSMg#PPA5,M1 (Accessed 26.08.08, 12.31.)

The Cambridge online Dictionary. UK: Cambridge University Press 2008.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=38379&dict=CALD : Definition of ‘human’.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=8532&dict=CALD : Definition of ‘body’. (Accessed 26.08.08, 11.32.)