The Body: A Postscript

The news last week that Angelina Jolie has had a preventative double mastectomy has ignited a variety of different debates. She has garnered enormous support from women who similarly carry the same gene and live with the enduring shadow of doubt and concern regarding their health and the future of their families. At the same time this move signals the further ascent of genetics to the crown of popular science. So deeply trusted is genetics that it can motivate individuals to make huge life decisions regarding their present health in anticipation of statistical models of future ill health. From a more sociological perspective it is notable that the future choices of many women have been influenced by Jolie. Her status, celebrity, and wealth position her in a unique locus to make this choice. Whilst it is indeed empowering to many, it is also somewhat abstract and removed from the reality which so many other women of similar genetic backgrounds inhabit.

This news arrived just as I was marking the final papers for the course “Anthropology of the Body, Love and Emotion”. These research papers were impressive and inspiring, surveying a vast array of material that included; people’s interaction with the Bruce Lee statue at the Avenue of Stars, Shanghai Longtang houses and nostalgia, Cyborg Anthropology, Body Modification and Orientalism, the Veil and anorexia, Gay Bear subculture in Hong Kong, Emotions and social media, hairstyles and masculinity, masturbation…and much much more of equal diversity and originality. No one chose to do a paper on ‘Adventure Time’, despite me dropping hints. Alas…

So Jolie’s news came as a kind of postscript on the body that would have been apposite for my class. During the course we discussed Phantom Limb Pain (PLP) but also Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) which in some cases has led people to amputate perfectly healthy limbs. It is easy to make a link here to Jolie, she was not ill. She had no breast cancer. But psychologically, as far as I am aware, she did not disassociate herself from her breasts. Ethically we do have to question what we are doing and where we are going with body modification. It may be an individual’s choice, but it often includes the participation of others. On what grounds can we eliminate healthy parts of our bodies for new artificial ones? Ones that are perhaps augmented in function. Does my family history of myopia give reason and justification for me getting bionic eyes? Questions of post humanism, the dovetailing of technology and human biology multiply in such terrain.

What is perhaps safe to say is that our bodies are ours. We choose what to do with them and how to present, maintain, and use them. What is also true is the fact that our bodies are also cultural artefacts and social things.  What we choose to do with them sends murmurs, ripples, and shockwaves to the rest of humanity and in turn come back to us. As we grapple with these developments we endlessly make the new human body.

We cover some pretty interesting ideas in my Anthropology of the Body Love and Emotion class. This last week we covered the issue of the body online and technologically mediated sex. We looked at the LovePalz teledildonics which allow a couple to maintain an intimate relationship whilst apart. The LovePalz uses bluetooth technology for you to connect rhythms with partners.

The general consensus was that this was pretty radical, but at the same time it takes cybersex into an ambiguous realm of, actual intimacy, but remote. I somehow couldn’t help thinking of Woody Allen’s “Sleeper”. 

But just a day after our lecture Durex launched Fundawear. It has since been covered extensively in the media. With its astute focus on foreplay rather then penetrative sex, and its launch from the ubiquitous Durex, it looks to be more popularly embraced than the LovePalz device.

In terms of the issue of everyday hybridity it resonates with the ever closer ties we have with technology. Such interactions, this type of online intimacy is becoming somewhat prosaic. It has become an almost banal question to ask in any situation, “is there an app for that?” People already have intimate and emotional connections with their electronic devices (iPhone, laptop, television…kettle?). What one must consider is how the future of human interaction, culture and emotions will develop in an era where our relationships are normalised by disembodied intimacy?

These pictures of a variety of skaters, some well known, some less well known, come from a blog called the Skatorialist. Little information is on the blog, but it is run by photographer Sam Ashley.

The title of the blog is a neologism and portmanteau. The emphasis being on fine tailoring and skateboarding.

I have been preparing for a course on the experience of the body in human culture. One thing that I have been looking at is our engagement with the world through material objects that in some ways become part of our physical experience.

Simply think of your phone.

For skateboarders there is similarly an experience with the board. How could one describe this? Perhaps a fifth limb? Or for those familar with the “His Dark Materials”, a dæmon? It might be described as relational but extrabodily.

Well this blog juxtaposes the two elements. without the boards, these are just people, with the boards they are given a different context and meaning. Skateboards have long been used as fashion accessories. It always seems bizarre to me. Probably because it always looks so false. Yet these photos strike a different chord to the fashion pictures. There seems to be something very simple here, but also honest. Perhaps in these pictures the camera has captured that enigmatic relationship between board and person. Between body and object.

(Thanks to Joey for the tip)

I have been thinking about Goffman and Facebook again. His analogy of the Front Stage / Back Stage, tends to fit really well with Social Media. I have posted on this subject before, (here too) and I find the subject of Facebook quite compelling.

So we go to the subject of quantity right now, rather than quality. Isn’t that what Social Media is really all about? Maximising the network connections, rather than the quality of the information stored. Meaningful posts on Facebook are best acknowledged by an intimate few, whilst “I’m never drinking again”, or “the kids have destroyed the carpet”, get endless responses, comments, and likes etc. 

So what would the Facebook experience be like if we had only the basic information that our postings were being read? No numbers, not quantified accounts of their reach? The gifs above give a nice idea. on Grosser’s page he also acknowledges how this would translate to other websites. “4,235 people like this” becomes “people like this”, and after all those numbers ultimately become meaningless, so why not dispense with them. They offer a very false understanding of what the “real” impact of anything “social” on the web is. 

Or perhaps we could turn up the emotional impact (Boesel has a different suggestion on this). Rather than the increasingly vacuous “like”, we could have “4,235 people liked this”, “cried at this”, “laughed at this”, “were sarcastic about this”, “reconsidered some of their life decisions because of this”, “accidentally clicked the mouse whilst looking at this”.

However, the real issue here is that I have changed the tense. “Liked” rather than “Like” shows us that “Social Media” is temporal, that things have happened and moved on. Perhaps not something that we want to know. Part of the mystique is that it is supposedly timeless, that way we spend more time on it?

Have a look at this posting by Whitney Erin Boesel and also the product and page she makes reference to by Benjamin Grosser.