Annotated Bibliography
Baron, Denis. The Mutant Flesh: Fabrication of a Posthuman. Paris: Éditions Dis
Voir, 2009. Print.
Baron discusses the posthuman as one that lives in hope of re-defining identity or improving human capacities, experimenting on the ‘amplified’ body, through bodily modification. A crossbreed of technology and organic body, progress made through genetic modification change the structure of living and the idea of the human itself. Baron makes reference to William Gibson’s’ Neuromancer as having predicted the technological whims of the human, profiting from the malleability of digital data. Manifesting as hybrids, prisoners of technology, or extensions of machines, Baron describes the body as being either cold and mechanical or liberated flesh with an unstable mind. With the presence of technology in contemporary culture and discourse, ‘human nature’ is questioned and redefined between anthropomorphism (human becoming animal) and technomorphism (human transformed and ‘giving birth’ to digital data). According to Baron, the hybrid is seen as a visual translation of a posthuman world, both utopian and post-apocalyptic. In a techno-culture, the possibility of the body escaping its natural condition of the aging process and the death of the body is considered inevitable progress for human beings, bringing into question the boundaries of science and technology. Baron discusses body modifications as a means of achieving new sensations and renewing identity, though the result of these transformations through technology are yet unknown, and may in fact permanently shatter the human identity of ‘being’. Baron describes the posthuman as a loss of distinction between natural and artificial, human and machine, making it difficult to impose body limits and boundaries on human experience. Leading to new paths of knowledge, the body no longer needs to be present, ‘the human’ merging with the digital/technological environment, and the body continuously re-shapes, re-identifies and re-configures through multiple identities as avatars, clones, and cyborgs. This book was fascinating to read. I was mostly interested in the idea of the assimilation of technology into the human body as being part of a natural evolution. With rapid advancements of technology, and the integration of technology into every aspect of our lives (whether visible or invisible), I feel as though this book points to the human as hurtling towards a permanent change. Whether our eyes are open or not, remains to be seen.
Braidotti, R. “Posthuman, All Too Human: Towards a New Process Ontology.” Theory, Culture & Society 23.7-8 (2006): 197-208. Web.
Braidotti discusses Donna Haraway’s ideas of the cyborg and the posthuman in terms of ethical and political accountability and a social criticism of science. With her knowledge of science and technology, Haraway has the insight necessary to point toward a connection between contemporary biotechnology and human and social sciences. Braidotti compares Haraway to Deleuze in their refusal to romanticize and sentimentalize the relationship between the human and non-human environment. In a postmodern era, the idea of ‘the human’ is no longer a stable concept, in need of redefinition in a technologically mediated society and series of contradictions of what constitutes a ‘human’. Braidotti analyzes Haraway’s feminist take on the body through a dialogue of science and technology, inviting society to consider the new kinds of bodies and gender systems being constructed as a result of networking, communication redesign and interconnections. Highlighting the central issues of gender, sexuality and multiple identities, Braidotti focuses on Haraway’s cyborg as part of a bigger discussion around survival and social justice, the political nature of the re-unification of the human figure within contemporary posthuman culture. Through a redefinition of what constitutes the ‘human’ (or necessarily the ‘posthuman’) and the politics of a modern techno-culture, both Haraway and Braidotti emphasize the need for compassion, affinity and accountability in order to sustain culture, community and the human. Within my research, I am interested in the posthuman. While many of the essays I have read all relate to the cyborg, I am hoping to better understand the variety of conversations surrounding the concerns between a human/machine posthuman. At this point, I am neither for nor against technology, or the cyborg, though I have my own fears of what it means to be human in a posthuman world. I am currently reading other essays by Braidotti, as suggested by Randy Cutler.
Demos, T. J. “Duchamp’s Labyrinth: “First Papers of Surrealism”, 1942.” October 97 (2001): 91-119. Print.
This essay discusses two art exhibits, opened within one week of each other in New York, 1942. The first exhibition, First Papers of Surrealism, was dominated by a “labyrinthine string installation” conceived by Marcel Duchamp, creating a barrier between the viewer and the paintings on display. The second was an inaugural show at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery, curated and designed by Frederick Kiesler that integrated the works into a sculptural space, removed from their frames and hung from strings. Author TJ Demos discusses these two exhibitions in relation to the displacement of the avant-garde in 1942, as a result of WWII, with Kiesler’s exhibit compensating for the loss of “home” and the displaced Surrealists, and Duchamp’s reinforcement of the “homeless” space that was a result of exile and dislocation. Demos describes the “homeless” in terms of Freud’s “Uncanny” or “unheimlich” a psychoanalytic theory used throughout Surrealism, and the redefinition of homelessness throughout the Surrealist movement both politically and artistically from 1935 to 1942. According to Demos, Surrealism in exile, in the early 1940s, was polarized by a longing for a reconciled “home” (Kiesler’s installation) and an assault against the institutionalization of Surrealism (Duchamp’s disorganized string installation). Demos discusses Adorno’s criticism of homeliness as a disregard for the reality of displacement due to war, and a “betrayal of knowledge”. Duchamp’s installation becomes, according to Demos, a political statement against fascism and a subversion of Surrealism’s movement toward homeliness. I am interested in contextualizing my work within the discourse of Surrealism, for its connection to the ‘uncanny’, as well as the use of collage and the readymade. I was interested in this essay because of the impermanent nature of the world during the Second World War, the physical dislocation of populations and the physical and visual representations of ‘homelessness’.
Grenville, Bruce, ed. The Uncanny: Experiments in Cyborg Culture. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002. Print.
As the opening essay for the Vancouver Art Gallery Exhibition catalogue Uncanny, Bruce Grenville chronicles instances and representations of the cyborg from the 17th Century through to present day, focusing on the cyborg in visual arts, but also in relation to literature, philosophy, science and cinema. Grenville describes the cyborg as a representation of our desire to make sense of technology. From the 17th Century, the distinction between animal and human was made through the presence of the human soul (Descartes), but the automaton, mimicking human and animal movement showed the influence of mechanics over the function of the body, offering an opportunity to marvel at the mechanized representation of the human and the skill and knowledge required to create it. According to Grenville, Marcel Duchamp was one of the first artists to represent the machine as a threat to the limitations of the human body, and Duchamp’s influence on the modern concept of the machine was widespread, becoming a distinct entity, invading, embracing and re-forming the human body. Using Freud’s theory of the uncanny, the cyborg’s uncanniness relates to the body double, threatening to consume us and destroy our link to nature, history and the body itself. The cyborg reminds us that the human body can function without a soul. Throughout early modernism, the machine, represented as sexual and specifically female, alludes to the anxiety surrounding the threat of the machine (the female threatening the solidarity and unity of the patriarchy). This image resulted, as Grenville notes, in the confusion between desire and repulsion. Cybernetics, a term coined in 1946 as a new science devoted to describing the controller of all systems of information (including the human mind), firmly established the possibility for a human machine. Within the medical field cybernetics has a positive connotation of assisting, correcting and enhancing the body through prosthetics and implants, while in visual culture, the focus lies on the military and criminal applications of cybernetics. While I didn’t see this exhibit at the VAG, I am interested in Grenville’s variety of historical examples of the cyborg. What I find most interesting are the images and ideas that can be consider as cyborg, other than the initial and immediate tendency to consider it simply part human and part machine. Also of interest were the associations of the cyborg and the theory of the uncanny. This text is a good starting point into my research of the uncanny nature of the representation of the hybrid image of part-human-part-non-human.
Halberstam, Judith. “Automating Gender: Postmodern Feminism in the Age of the Intelligent Machine.” Feminist Studies 17.3 (1991): 439-460. Print.
In this early 90s postmodern feminist text, Judith Halberstam discusses the concerns of an autonomous technology, within the parameters of gender studies. She frames the two basic concerns of cybernetics (thinking machines) as a computer able to simulate human thought and secondly computers replacing humans in the work place. She argues that while these concerns are valid, they redirect the discourse of the mind-body split as one based on gender: men being identified with thought, intellect and reason, and women with body, emotion and intuition. The threat and seductiveness of autonomous technology has led to the gendering of technology as female. Therefore, the adaptation and infiltration of technology into the body and, particularly in the form of a female cyborg, enhances the masculine fear of the deceptiveness and influences of the female body and becomes signified as “otherness”. Halberstam does not argue for or against technology, incorporating references that refuse a demonology of technology and those that equate artificial intelligence with the loss of self. She discusses the cyborg as producing the effect of the ‘uncanny’, a Freudian term referring to something unsettlingly familiar and repressed. Relating postmodernism to feminism, Halberstam deals with fragmentation, ambiguity, and multiplicity of identity as a means of representation, and the cyborg as always partially human and partially machine, constantly in the state of becoming human. I was interested in this essay for its focus on the gender issues of technology, and also its neutrality in the argument for or against technology. I was led to this text through other readings on both feminism and the cyborg.
Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. 149-181. Print.
As one chapter in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: Reinvention of Nature, Donna Haraway discusses the cyborg – part organism and part machine, creature of science fiction and social reality – specifically related to the 20th Century woman. Haraway writes of modern medicine, coded devices and couplings of social and bodily reality, and relates the cyborg to the hybridized mythological chimera. Haraway argues that the relationship between human and machine challenges the boundaries of production, reproduction and imagination. Haraway is also interested in the pleasure derived from the confusion of those boundaries and the contribution to the social-feminist utopian vision of a world without gender. According to Haraway, the cyborg threatens the patriarchal social hierarchy, as it has no origin and the role of the father no longer essential. Haraway describes the early cyborg appearing in myth as a transgression between human and animal, and pre-cybernetic machines as caricatures of masculine dreams of reproduction. But with the new advancements in technology, we are no longer certain of the role that these cyborgs play as they subvert organic wholes, and what counts as nature is undermined. Throughout the essay, Haraway uses examples of social and Marxist feminist movements and theories to discuss issues of identity, the feminization of poverty, the historicity of women as a group, and the exploitation of women into a world system of production/reproduction. Haraway also discusses modern biology as a translation of the world into code, the organism giving way to the biotic component: the transplant, the immunization, and genetic engineering. Key to the argument throughout the essay is the issue of duality – self/other, nature/culture, man/woman, mind/body – that it is no longer clear who makes and what is made, and communication or translation of code in both technological and biological form. The separation between human and machine becomes less clear. This was an extremely complex and heavy essay, though one I felt was imperative to my research, as most texts referring to the cyborg reference Haraway and specifically this text. I attended a lecture by Randy Cutler on this reading in order to better understand the essay. I am interested in Haraway’s more revolutionary approach to the cyborg, and the extensive discussion of feminism in relation to the cyborg culture.
Jones, Amelia et al. “The Body and Technology.” Art Journal 60.1 (2001): 20-39. Print.
In this series of short essays on the topic of the body, technology and art practices, various authors discuss artistic mediums and the influence of technology on their creation and consumption. Amelia Jones compares visual culture from the Industrial Revolution – with the utopian views of the artist’s role to emote through visual forms new dimensions of technology and industry – to post World War II with the growing awareness of the terrible potential for technological advances and the loss of utopian values in the cybernetic, commodity culture. Jones argues that the Performing Arts have replaced, as a more effective emotive tool, oral/written translations of interpretations of technology and its affect on the body. As a result Visual theorists have realized that technology changes the way we do things and the way we understand ourselves and other. Geoffrey Batchen discusses the evolution of photography, having given modernity vision as a form of touch, and the palpability between the thing photographed to the viewer. Batchen expresses concern over the transformation of photography and that through new media and digital electronic data, photography has become abstracted unrelatable information. Peggy Phelan equates technology to a seductive promise, one yet to be revealed within contemporary art, and her cautious approach to technology as nostalgia for a lost world. Lastly, Christine Ross compares Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto to Performative art, both having fluidity, an openness to re-signification. She discusses the rapid integration of technology into everyday life, and our belief that we can control and improve nature through technology, as a problematic confirmation that the body is open to reconfiguration. Ross demonstrates that media art and its recent preoccupation with this fluidity is, in fact, a critique of insufficiency, limitations and fallibility, a reminder of our physical bodies and of our reliance on technology. This series of essays was of interest to my research through the variety of artistic mediums and practices concerned with the influence of technology. Not all positive, these essays explore the infiltration of technology into every aspect of our lives and the global concern over the effect it will have.
Joselit, David et al. “Biocollage.” Art Journal 59.3 (2000): 44-63. Print.
“Mapping the New New World” by Ernest Larsen and Sherry Millner, within a larger series of essays titled ‘Biocollage’, discusses the Human Genome Project, described metaphorically in terms such as the Holy Grail, code of codes, mosaic, blueprint, software, and master medical model, to name a few. This immense project of unraveling the genetic code is made possible technically and economically through the computer and globalization. The metaphors used to describe the project, on one hand mundane and the other sublime, reflect science’s conflict between pure research and power/knowledge. Larsen and Millner discuss the nature of ‘the’ human body, existing only as an individual figure, differing from one another and having different genetic codes. The Human Genome Project, according to Larsen and Millner negotiates the fiction of the human body but dismissing difference and using the human body as the embodiment of totalization. Through the Human Genome Project mapping the code of every gene, the human body will become available to everyone as coded information via the internet. Larsen and Millner discuss the map in relation to artmaking, as a method of making visible information that is invisible and possibly misunderstood. If the body is being radically reconfigured by science and technology, then visual arts can provide the public with a visual representation of the social, political and emotional implications of these changes. They use two- and three-dimensional collage and montage as an example of layering meaning and information analogous to the science project of mapping. Charts, drawings, xrays, photographs, diagrams and models can be appropriated as artistic representations of the scientific territory. According to Larsen and Millner, a critical art practice is able to produce visual representations of the relations of power/knowledge to the body as Other. In looking for an essay that related technology, research, science and collage, I came across this series of essays. The Human Genome Project has been brought up in many of the texts I have already read, and I was intrigued by the direct association these authors made to collage as a method of representing the de-coding of the human gene. The idea of the body as information is one that has come up several times in my research, and I am interested in finding a solution to the visual representation of this idea.
Krauss, Rosalind. “”Informe” without Conclusion.” October 78 (1996): 89-105. Print.
This essay, within a larger series of essays titled ‘Biocollage’, discusses the Human Genome Project, described metaphorically in terms such as the Holy Grail, code of codes, mosaic, blueprint, software, and master medical model, to name a few. This immense project of unraveling the genetic code is made possible technically and economically through the computer and globalization. The metaphors used to describe the project, on one hand mundane and the other sublime, reflect (Halberstam)science’s conflict between pure research and power/knowledge. Larsen and Millner discuss the nature of ‘the’ human body, existing only as an individual figure, differing from one another and having different genetic codes. The Human Genome Project, according to Larsen and Millner negotiates the fiction of the human body but dismissing difference and using the human body as the embodiment of totalization. Through the Human Genome Project mapping the code of every gene, the human body will become available to everyone as coded information via the internet. Larsen and Millner discuss the map in relation to artmaking, as a method of making visible information that is invisible and possibly misunderstood. If the body is being radically reconfigured by science and technology, then visual arts can provide the public with a visual representation of the social, political and emotional implications of these changes. They use two- and three-dimensional collage and montage as an example of layering meaning and information analogous to the science project of mapping. Charts, drawings, xrays, photographs, diagrams and models can be appropriated as artistic representations of the scientific territory. According to Larsen and Millner, a critical art practice is able to produce visual representations of the relations of power/knowledge to the body as Other. In looking for an essay that related technology, research, science and collage, I came across this series of essays. The Human Genome Project has been brought up in many of the texts I have already read, and I was intrigued by the direct association these authors made to collage as a method of representing the de-coding of the human gene. The idea of the body as information is one that has come up several times in my research, and I am interested in finding a solution to the visual representation of this idea.
Nochlin, Linda. The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity. Thames & Hudson, 2001. Print.
Nochlin describes the fragment or the ‘body in pieces’ as a symbol of modernity as irrevocable loss, regret for lost totality and a vanished wholeness. According to Nochlin, the French Revolution brought with it the modern period, enacting the deliberate destruction of the past and its repressive traditions, with dismemberment and fragmentation becoming the ideology of the Revolution. Images of severed heads, cannibalism, wounded soldiers and death evoked the idea of the body as the site of suffering, pain and death. The larger implication of the fragmented body marks the social, psychological and metaphysical modern experience, through loss of wholeness, a shattering of connection and disintegration of permanent value. Impressionism was the first art movement associated with modernism, according to Nochlin, with the cut-off view of the body and the cropped picture surface dominating the work, and the modern painter dissolving into the crowd, fluidity becoming the distinctive quality of modern life. Nochlin discusses the fragmented body as central to modern art; the bodily fragment signifying Surrealist production (collage), and the questioning of sexuality and the body as a unified entity. Within Postmodernism, Nochlin describes the fragment as subverting modernist rationality, the re-introduction of abjection, and gender-bending metamorphosis using examples of artists such as Cindy Sherman and Robert Mapplethorpe. While Nochlin describes the fragment throughout modernity and into postmodernism, she does not want to suggest an all-encompassing theory of the fragment in relation to modernity, rather the creation of a paradigm through which to consider the fragmented subject. This was another recommendation by Randy Cutler, as it relates to the body, the fragment and my use of collage in my work. As a means of contextualizing my work, it was important to understand what the fragment signified within modernism and postmodernism. Again, Cindy Sherman’s work was used as an example. I was most intrigued by Gericault’s paintings, especially his fragmented limbs and decapitated heads, and the use of the fragment to symbolize loss and fluidity of identity.
Royle, Nicholas. Introduction. The Uncanny. Routledge, 2003. Print.
In the first chapter of Royle’s book, he describes the uncanny as another interpretation of the beginning, already haunted, ghostly. The uncanny is the feeling of uncertainty with regard to who one is and what is being experienced; a crisis of the ‘natural’ as described by human nature, and the nature of the reality of the world. Taking Freud’s description of the experience of the uncanny, Royle uses examples of missing or prosthetic body-parts, dismemberment, or phantom limbs; it is felt in response to anything life-like, or mechanical objects; something strangely beautiful but also frightening. Royle questions the state of the natural world, our identity and the politics of the future as the identity of what constitutes humanness is constantly manipulated, transformed and even duplicated. The uncanny, not only described psychologically and aesthetically, is present in everyday life, in relation to issues of sexuality, class, race, gender, and also automation, technology and programming. According to Royle, the uncanny provides the basis with which to explore, within the coming decades, the future of human feeling. Using the example of Derrida’s text On Grammatology, Royle relates the uncanny to “deconstruction,” where difference operates at the heart of identity, exploring the effect of the foreign body, borders and margins. Having heard the term ‘uncanny’ many times before, I never really considered what I actually meant. When I read this chapter, I was fascinated to discover that the ‘uncanny’ effect was exactly what I was trying to achieve in my previous body of work. I was mostly interested in Royle’s association of the uncanny with technology and the future of automation and programming. How long will it take before the novelty of technology wears off and we begin to feel uneasy with the unfamiliar, non-human presence in our daily lives?
Seltzer, Mark. “Wound Culture: Trauma in the Pathological Public Sphere.” October 80 (1997): 3-26. Print.
Seltzer describes the public’s fascination with torn and open bodies and the gathering around shock, trauma and the wound in relation to the breakdown of the distinction between the individual and the mass, public and private. Mark Seltzer writes that postmodern art is interested in probing the wound and exploring the effect of repeated trauma, represented as a culture of suffering, injury and attachment to wound. Using examples of serial killers, murder mystery novels, and video games, he explores the notion of the trauma as a failure of distinction between the real and the virtual representation; a virtual wound has the same effect as a real wound on the subject, and therefore acts as a spectacle for the masses. This virtual representation is reinforced by the growing connection between human and machine. The boundaries between inside (private) and outside (public), continuously switching, can no longer be assumed to relate to a representation of reality, in either the external world or the inner world of our minds. Seltzer states that with the infiltration of a digital network or virtual reality, the threat is not of making the human body obsolete, but dissolution of the difference between body and technology/information. Popular culture, filled with references to the half-human-half-machine, and torn, traumatized bodies, the spectacle becomes about the infiltration of body and technology. Within cultural study discourse, Seltzer observes the return of the body and the return of the real as a means of reinvesting in the dichotomy of mind/body, and a fascination with observing the wound and discovering the original trauma within the wound culture. This essay is of interest to me as I am investigating the limitations of the representation of the human body. How far can the figure/body be ‘traumatized’ and still remain recognizable or sympathetic to the viewer? What representations of the human/machine dichotomy still invoke a sense of the human figure?
Thacker, Eugene. “Data Made Flesh: Biotechnology and the Discourse of the Posthuman.” Cultural Critique 53 (2003): 72-97. Print.
In this essay, Thacker discusses the biotech century as the intersection of bioscience and computer science known as the field of ‘bioinformatics’. Thacker explores questions of the body, databases, biological and technological boundaries, and what happens to “the human” in relation to information technology. By means of the humanist/posthumanist discourse, and a technological future, Thacker discusses the disintegration of human limits and the advent of a transhumanist or ‘extropian’ approach that values progress, self-transformation, optimism, rational thinking, intelligent technology and self-direction that reveals the tension of posthuman thought. According to Thacker, posthumanism, as a form of humanism, lacks a consideration for the impact that technology and ‘non-humans’ have on the world around us; the divide between human and non-human remains intact, and the utopian ideal is that the human through technological advancements, would evolve beyond the need for technology. The extropian vision realizes the technological progress has a direct effect on the evolution of “the human” and thus the human is transformed by the technology: a co-evolution of human and technology takes place. This essay discusses, through evolution, technological advancements, biological sciences and informatics, the question of how much the human can be transformed and still remain essentially “human”. Comparatively, Thacker uses examples of writers/theorists such as Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway and Katherine Hayles to open a discourse into the question of the body, the future, and technology in political and social contexts and responsibilities, and a redistribution of identity. The fear is for the loss of value in the body and a physical presence, and the shift of value toward manipulation, replication and disembodiment of information. As a means of combining both areas of concern, Thacker introduces Biotechnological research. Employing technologies like the computer, applied to the study of the biological domain, ‘biotech’ focuses on the ability for information to transform health care, medicine, and the norms of the body. In reading this essay, I began to question my own negative approach to technology, and the infiltration of biotechnology into the human body. Thacker proves that through a socially and politically responsible approach, the human/machine transformation can be seen as a viable and reasonable evolution of the human.
Birmingham, Peg. “Holes of Oblivion: The Banality of Radical Evil.” Hypatia 18.1 (2003): 80-103. Print.
In this essay, Birmingham discusses political theorist Hannah Arendt’s reflections on evil, informing her political thoughts on natality, action, solidarity and shared humanity. According the Birmingham, Arendt’s position on evil is an enduring preoccupation, focusing on the fragility of human existence and the need for man to take common responsibility for the human capacity for evil rather than evil being human nature. Arendt uses Kristeva’s concept of abjection to discuss the desolation brought by the threat of evil and the event of natality, and horror as the contemporary experience of wonder in the face of man capacity for evil. According to Birmingham, Arendt blames man’s desire for omnipotence and the totalitarian regime for evil and the need for humanity to take responsibility for our (collective) actions. Arendt refers to the banality of evil as being related to the abandonment by religiosity and the manifestation of hell on earth, using the Nazis concentration camps as evidence of the presence of man-made hell. Abjection is therefore related to the heterogeneous nature of the community, the disintegration of the border between the self and the rest of humanity. This essay was extremely interesting, though I’m not sure how it necessarily relates to my research as of yet. What intrigued me what the concept of evil as universal, the responsibility of all man to their collective capacity for evil, as well as the concept of the banal, a term which up until now I related to the mundane and everyday rather than a forsaking or banishment in theological terms. I have come across Arendt before in texts written by Kristeva and discussions of feminism. I would like to explore the relationship of evil and abject, as I’m not sure I completely understand the connection.
Brielmier, Isolde et al. Wangechi Mutu: A Shady Promise. Bologna: Damiani, 2008
In the introductory essay “Enter Cautiously,” Michael Veal discusses Mutu’s body of work, describing her images of collaged and fragmented feminine figures as disfigured, evolving and post-human, referencing both the evolution of the African nation (from a pre-colonial site of mysticism and nature to a post-colonial view of a nation wrought with war and disease), and the evolution of a planet and species. Wangechi casts her female characters as savage and brutal, reclaiming the tropes of black women, while simultaneously displaying the feminine as the site of regenerative power. From delicate line drawings of earlier works to her later images of collaged bodies and performative spaces, Veal relates Wangechi’s figures to sites of trauma, with ruptures and wounds leaking ‘life-giving fluids’ and ‘toxic elixirs,’ both alluring and disturbing. I read another essay on the topic of alchemy and I liked Veal’s relation of the alchemical to Wangechi’s work; the bodily fluids that give life would eventually reveal a promise for something greater, a transmutation of the vicious feminine as powerful. Her work is terrifying and awe-ful: there is an ineffable quality to the work that reflects both the abject and the sublime that I am interested in with my own image-making. When I saw Wangechi’s work in the Visceral Bodies show at the Vancouver Art Gallery earlier this year, I was amazed by the visceral affect of her work, and the apparent ease with which she negotiated the space of the abjected body and the power of the imagery. While reading this essay, and others about her work, I am drawn to her materials, her subject matter and the language she uses to discuss her work. My question is then, how do I make work that provokes the same visceral reaction without appropriating her style? What can I say in my work that is different from what she is already dealing with?
Codrescu, Andrei. The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
Author Andrei Codrescu writes a quirky introduction to the Dada movement, with an alphabetical reference in the second half as a further guide to Dada history, terminology, and important figures. Codrescu claims Dada as the saboteur and corrector of the Posthuman world, comparing Posthumanism to virtual reality and Dada to the virus, meant to infiltrate, corrupt and potentially destroy the systems and mechanisms put into place through the automation of society. If Dada can outlast Xerox and potentially Google, Codrescu discusses the possibility that this early 20th century subversive and tongue-in-cheek movement will preserve the past and integrate the future into a Posthuman life based on an awareness of all living connections. This book was full of humour and 21st Century terminology that articulated a kind of urgency and revealing of the future before the present has even been experienced. I am interested in the Dada movement because of the non-sensical, instantaneous creation and manipulation of the everyday object and the revolutionary thoughts it provoked in the early 20th Century. I felt overwhelmed and excited when reading this text, and found myself wishing to be sitting at this imaginary table with Tzara and Lenin, playing a game that would determine the future of the world. I am not sure how the Dada movement relates to my work or my research at this point, but I feel like there may be a connection between the sense and non-sense and the play of inside/outside, self/other that appears in other essays and texts I have read. It is also important for me to situate myself historically and I am fascinated by the continued presence of Dadaism in art history. I have yet to read another book about Dada and Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven on the topic of gender and everyday modernity. I don’t want to get side-tracked by Dadaism, but there is something there that moves me.
Descartes, René. “Animals are Machines.” In Environmental Ethics: Divergence and Convergence, eds. S.J. Armstrong and R.G. Botzler (New York: McGraw-Hill), 1993, 281-285. Print.
In this short essay, Rene Descartes discusses his view that humans are distinctly different from animals (non-humans) and the rest of the natural world. He compares non-humans to automata; outward appearance and function cannot differentiate machine and animal because, according to Descartes, all non-humans lack reason and language. An automaton can resemble a human, but we can separate human and automata by firstly determining the capacity for speech or other signs for expressing thought and secondly that actions, while resembling or surpassing human performance must be performed with knowledge or intent. Descartes uses the example of a magpie or parrot, which in mimicking human language appears to be using speech, but lacks the intelligence, consciousness or intent. He also disregards signs that are made between non-humans expressed passion (as associated with instinct), as they can be performed without thought. While Descartes does admit to the similarities between human and non-human organs, the discerning difference would be the two types of souls: the corporeal soul, purely mechanical and dependent on the construction of the organs; the incorporeal mind, defined as a thinking substance. Descartes concludes that there is no evidence that animals have a thinking soul and are therefore segregated to “natural automata.” I am fascinated by this essay as an archaic reference to the perceived relationship between human and non-human, man versus nature. This essay was suggested as a means of understanding anthropomorphism and how it might relate to my work, as it was present in much of my previous work, I feel as though I am no longer prescribing human attributes to animals but possibly the opposite. Is this still considered anthropomorphic?
Foster, Hal. “Obscene, Abject, Traumatic.” October 78.Autumn (1996): 106-124. Print.
In this text, Foster delves into the subject of the ‘gaze,’ defined by Lacan as a threat: an arresting and violent force of the real, projected (represented) on a ‘screen,’ as in the surface of a painting or picture-making, to not only trick the eye, but subvert and tame the violent gaze (reality). Foster argues that in contemporary art, the artist is no longer interested in taming the gaze, but to attack or break through the ‘screen,’ shifting the focus from the image-screen to the object-gaze. Using artists like Cindy Sherman, Andres Serrano, Mike Kelley and John Miller, Foster discusses Kristeva’s abject, Bataille’s informe and the obscene. As the abject subject is presented as being opposed to culture and formed in the unconscious, Foster questions whether the abject can be represented at all: whether there can be a conscientious abjection. Foster also examines the connection of the abject to the sublime: the exposure of the symbolic in crisis (breakdown) and the possibilities (breakthrough) that this would open up. According to Foster, this correlation can be compared to early definitions of Postmodernism. Foster questions the fascination with trauma and the wound, blaming health care crises, economical instability and social and political dissatisfaction as the sites for cultural criticism, and the body as a site for these discussions to take place. I read this article several years ago and in re-reading it now can better understand the content. I would like to investigate the theory behind Lacan’s ‘gaze,’ as I believe it relates to my interest in affect. Foster’s question of representing the abject is important to my research as I am attempting to create works that exist in an indeterminate and ineffable space and explore the visceral reaction. Foster’s essay makes the abject more understandable allowing me to negotiate and interpret the topic more easily.
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
In the opening chapter, Approaching Abjection, Kristeva introduces the concept of the abject as neither subject nor definable object, but of having the quality of being opposed to “I”. Lacking meaning, exclusionary, and uncanny, its insignificance has the ability to crush under a weight of meaninglessness. Kristeva uses food loathing as a basic example of abjection, something to be rejected or expelled. More directly abject, the corpse then represents the border of existence, the ultimate abjection. She points out the difference between filth or the unclean and abjection as being the disturbance of identity, order and rules. Kristeva discusses the unconscious, the uncanny, affect, perversion and the sublime as it relates to abjection. I have read the first chapter of this essay several times and find it extremely difficult to navigate. While Kristeva does invite the reader to use imagination “for it is the working of imagination whose foundations are being laid here” (p. 5), the negotiation of poetic language makes this essay at times impenetrable. What interests me most in this first chapter is her discussion of the Sublime as a method of controlling the abject, that the abject exists on the boundary of the sublime and threatens the promise of progress in the wake of trauma and loss. I have gleaned more from other essays I have read about the abject, as more legible/intelligible (ie: Foster), but I felt it was necessary to know the source of these interpretations. I would be interested to read some of Kristeva’s mystery novels, specifically The Old Man and the Wolves, to approach her language and theories from a different angle.
Kul-Want, Christopher. Rev. of The Sublime Now, Ed. by Luke White and Claire Pajaczkowska. Visual Culture in Britain 11.2 (2010): 306-309. Print.
Christopher Kul-Want reviews a compilation of fourteen essays on the topic of the sublime, covering aspects of political and cultural theory, ecology, art and cinema, developed from a symposium entitled “The Sublime Object: Nature, Art, Language” held at Tate Britain in 2007. The concept of the sublime is examined as a predictable and regular re-occurrence in art and cultural discourses since its introduction in the Enlightenment period, though several contributors admit to not fully understanding the meaning of the concept of the sublime. During the Enlightenment, the sublime was not treated as a concept, or something to be understood, but as an affect or an experience exceeding understanding. In this book of essays, what interests a number of the writers is not the Kantian ineffability of the sublime, or the pleasure derived by surviving catastrophe and the infinite progress of man through these experiences, but rather the experience of powerlessness that precedes it. Powerlessness has been experienced increasingly by the Western subject over the last century, with respect to a sense of social, political and ecological alienation. I am particularly interested in the use of the sublime as a site of powerlessness, tragedy and loss. In my investigation between the similarities or cross-over between the sublime and the abject, this series of essays discusses the danger of the ineffable and the misuse of a concept behind a feeling. I am interested in the sublime as a site for the horrible and awe-some; the ‘falling down’ of the boundaries between the catastrophe and promise of progress. I am also in the process of reading through the Whitechapel compilation of essays on The Sublime.
Midttun, Birgitte Huitfeldt. “Crossing the Borders: An Interview with Julia Kristeva.” Hypatia 21.4 (2006): 164-177.
In an interview with Birgitte Huitfeldt Midttun, Kristeva talks about the abject, motherhood and love. Introducing Kristeva, renowned French poststructuralist, post-feminist and author, Midttun briefly touches on the concept of intertextuality: the communication of one text with another and, through the act of reading, the generation of a new interpretation of the texts. During the interview, Kristeva discusses the exiled author (referencing Augustine: “In via, in patria”), the individual in the world, sensuality in language, exchange or transference through analysis and listening, the “female genius” and sexuality. The main points of interests in this interview, as related to my research, are found in her discussion with Midttun about melancholia and the author Colette: that the critical foundation of her exuberance is a wound and her writing is a way to cope. She mentions the role Walter Benjamin placed on melancholy in modern art, and the artist as promoter of change through the communication of their direct experience of the transcendence of a betrayal or disappointment. This seems to resonate with the concept of the Sublime, and Kristeva’s more recent research into what she terms the “female genius”: the exaggeration of women’s creativity from a feminist standpoint of overcoming adversity and marginalization. In a more informal setting, Kristeva’s explanation of her research seems much more accessible. I am interested in her feminist views and her position in third wave feminism. Her research into the “female genius”, especially Colette is another avenue I would like to look into. I would also like to investigate the ‘intertextual’ in relation to the juxtaposition of disparate imagery and its effect on interpretation. I have read several essays and chapters either by or about Kristeva and am not only interested in her perspective, but I would like to better understand her theories in order to situate myself and find my own space to interpret her theories as they are the foundation of my research.
Ratcliff, Jamie. “Border Control: The Intersection of Feminism and Abjection in the Work of Paula Santiago.” SECAC Review 15.4 (2009): 456-63.
Jamie Ratcliff discusses artist Paula Santiago’s work in relation to imagery of gender and identity, introducing a larger discussion on feminism and the use of the body in art, and a comparison between Santiago and Frida Kahlo. Ratcliff identifies contradictions in Santiago’s work in the presence and absence of the body: hair and blood as bodily references; vacant garments that appear full without the presence of a figure to fill the negative space; organic materials reinforcing an association with decomposition and the biological process. According to Ratcliff, the tension in Santiago’s work comes from the tenuous nature of the work as it decays over time, mimicking the body and our limited lifespan. Santiago’s works are autobiographical, using her own hair and blood which in turn, according to some, brings into question for some the artist’s perceived instability and intentional self-sacrifice: “[…] artist who breach the separation between selves and their work enter a dangerous realm of instability, irrationality and disorder” (458). Santiago work references the abject with the play between the inside and outside and the disruption of the physical boundaries of the body, separating self (inside) and other (outside). Ratcliff discusses the similarities between Santiago and Kahlo’s work, in presenting the womb as the site of separation: Kahlo’s Cefál directly references a horrific scene of the artist re-entering the womb, symbolizing the destruction of her ‘self’; Santiago’s To Protect Oneself from History references a more fluid and open discussion of the threshold of the body and the fullness/emptiness of the womb. This essay was valuable as an introduction to Santiago’s work and a discussion of the use of the body in art. I was intrigued by the tension created by the decomposition of her work, and the question of her mental stability and her eventual sickness that made it impossible for her to use her own body as a site to cultivate materials made the works with her hair and blood more precious and valuable. I was also interested in the contradictory nature of her works using wax, mimicking the embalming process which arrests the decaying process. Santiago’s work prompted me to think about using textiles and raw/organic materials to evoke a visceral response rather than just the simulation of texture through drawing.
Westling, Louise. “Virginia Woolf and the Flesh of the World.” New Literary History 30.4 (1999): 855-875. Print.
This essay investigates Virginia Woolf’s writing as a part of a cultural shift that includes philosopher Merleau-Ponty, surrounding the recognition of humanity as being part of the rest of life and a rejection of the Cartesian separation of subject and object. Through her novels and diaries, Westling describes Woolf’s portrayal of the non-human world as part of a “pulsating field of mind and matter in which everything is interconnected” (856). Westling examines Woolf’s novels, including The Voyage Out (1915), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Between the Acts (1941), and Woolf’s use of the non-human world to challenge permanence, progress and transcendence, echoing Merleau-Ponty’s description of the “man-animality intertwining” (857), overturning centuries of sterile humanist assumptions. Westling discusses Woolf’s interest in math and science, as a means of understanding Nature, and Einstein’s physics that confirmed her sense of the world. I have never read Woolf’s work, but this essay excited me and opened up the possibility of her literature as an anthropomorphic source of imagery. I was at first drawn to the essay based on the title “the Flesh of the World,” but the connections between Woolf, Merleau-Ponty and Einstein (literature, phenomenology and physics) obviously surpassed the superficiality of the title. Specific points in the essay that I want to explore further are David Abrams’ references to the “more than human” to describe the “non-human” world, and the relationship between Being and Becoming. I have been directed to research the concept of “Becoming” rather than “Being” but I would like to know the basics of both and how they relate to my interest.
