Abstract
During the past couple of decades, the body has attracted massive attention in popular debate as well as in scholarly literature. We are living in “body times” to use an expression coined by ethnologists Susanne Lundin and Lynn Åkesson. This booming interest in bodies is intriguing; as once remarked by Emily Martin, it indicates a period characterized by new types of challenges to bodies as we know them. Nevertheless, notions about bodies often remain implicit in the commentary on “new technologies of the body,” “enhancement of bodies,” “sexualization of the body,” or “(bio-)medicalization of the body.” Commenting on the surge of body literature, Janelle Taylor has pointed to “a tendency to presume, rather than ask, what a body is and where its significant boundaries are located.” She suggests, as have other scholars in STS, anthropology, and philosophy, that we need to begin to question how something becomes part of a body at a very basic level. This chapter addresses the call.
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Notes
- 1.
Lundin and Åkesson (1996).
- 2.
Martin (1992).
- 3.
Taylor (2005:749); see also Strathern and Lambek (1998) who insist on acknowledgement of phenomenological experience without reification of a transcendental body category. See also Latour’s discussion of the ways in which knowing the body is constitutive for what bodies are and what can be done to them (Latour 2004).
- 4.
The political project is often implicit; still many scholars seem to share Donna Haraway’s view: “The perfection of the fully defended, ‘victorious’ self is a chilling fantasy” (Haraway 1991:224). I am influenced by elements of this political project, as I with the basic ontology, but I fear an ontology of emergence can have as many cruel effects as a stable and positivist one.
- 5.
Ihde (2002) refers to the phenomenological body as Body One and the Foucauldian body as Body Two. For a discussion and critique, see Feenberg (2006). This resonates of course with the mindful body described by Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock (1987) as comprising a body-self (corresponding to Body One), a social body (explored by structuralist theory which I will return to in a discussion of categorization below), and a body politic (corresponding to Body Two).
- 6.
A similar argument has been made by Brown et al. in their work on xenotransplantation. They write: “Crucially, mess is a consequence of purification and not a cause, a ‘by-product’ of ordering and for Latour, it is the very act of purification that proliferates the production of hybrids. Boundary-making is intended to deny connection, to foreclose the production of hybrids, and so paradoxically acts to facilitate their manufacture” (Brown et al. 2006a:209).
- 7.
- 8.
Dickenson (2007), Holland (2001), and Kimbrell (1993). Lisa Blackman suggests that our major current challenge is to find ways to discuss integrity without presuming bodily boundaries (Blackman 2010), and while we might agree to some extent, the very posing of the challenge itself represents assumptions about integrity as tied to bounded entities and can thus be seen as an act of purification.
- 9.
Hogle (1996).
- 10.
- 11.
Mol and Law (2004:57).
- 12.
Enfield et al. (2006).
- 13.
Ihde criticizes Merleau-Ponty for working with an implicit sports body (Ihde 2002), and Feenberg (2006) in turn criticizes Ihde for not considering the dependent and the extended body. Partly, what I will do below is consider what that would imply in the sense that I discuss ubjects (extended bodies on the move) and cadavers (dependents on the care of others to remain a body of meaning).
- 14.
Merleau-Ponty (2002).
- 15.
A parallel anthropological literature has followed Lock’s invitation to avoid distinguishing between biology and culture. In her work on the different ways of undergoing menopause around the world, she illustrated the dangers of presuming nature to produce similar diseases which were simply “read” differently in divergent cultures (Lock 1993). We should instead approach bodies as states of being that are always culturally mediated (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987). See also Mauss (2007).
- 16.
Farquhar and Lock (2007:2).
- 17.
Farquhar and Lock (2007:15).
- 18.
Merleau-Ponty (2002:431).
- 19.
Epstein (1973). A similar but less explicit analytical shift is made when Wolputte reverts to the basic observation that it is common for “people [to] create or maintain a sense of self” Wolputte (2004:261). Merleau-Ponty (2002) would probably not like the notion of “theories” because of its connotations to pure cognition. I would suggest that a person’s theory of self is enacted through concrete being-in-the-world and it is intuitive and embodied rather than abstract and contemplated, but the notion of theory serves the purpose of making it into a type of knowledge dependent on experience and practice, instead of than a pregiven capacity. The emphasis on cognition has been criticized also for ignoring insights from neurobiology (Quinn 2006), but while I acknowledge that there is no free-floating immaterial “sense of self,” I wish to avoid subscribing to an ontologization of self as a neurobiological entity.
- 20.
Shukin (2009).
- 21.
Haraway (2008).
- 22.
In some of the literature on personhood and subjecthood, it seems to be an implicit assumption that being recognized as a subject is always deemed desirable and deprivation of personhood always humiliating (see, e.g., Desjarlais 2000). However, we should recognize that objectification is not only a feature of many celebrated power structures such as the military where it is part of facilitating desired effects for the involved parties (irrespective of what I personally think of them). Objectification forms part of producing mechanisms associated with glory and honor. Objectification is also a desired aspect of many people’s sexual life. Finally, it has been argued that reduction of bodies to “mere objects” rarely ever takes place—even if it is in some instances a sort of ideal which can never be reached (Cussins 1998; Latour 2004), though totalitarian regimes have indeed come dangerously close to total objectification of unwanted bodies.
- 23.
A good introduction features in Carrithers et al. (1985). See also Bodenhorn and Bruck (2006) for a discussion of naming and naming practices as alternative entry points to relatedness and intersubjectivity; Wolputte (2004) for a general discussion of anthropological studies of the relationship between personhood, selfhood subjectivity, and the body; and Kaufman and Morgan (2005) for a discussion of typical contestations of what a person is.
- 24.
Read (1955).
- 25.
Bird-David (2004).
- 26.
- 27.
- 28.
Martin (2007).
- 29.
Kamper-Jørgensen et al. (2012).
- 30.
Lock (2000, 2002) and Sharp (2000, 2007). Haddow has interviewed relatives after the donation and argues that the very act of donation stimulates thoughts about how persons relate to bodies—basically, what a person is, if not the body that can be disintegrated, packaged, and implanted into others (Haddow 2005). See also Alnæs (2003), Fox and Swazey (1992), Hogle (1996), and Scheper-Hughes (2000).
- 31.
Another example of alternative ways of relating to organs-ways that depart from the biomedical paradigm-came from a Swedish study finding that some elderly recipients like the idea of a “good match” to be facilitated with organs from people of their own age, though in medical terms they constitute “marginal donors” of lower quality (Idvall and Lundin 2007).
- 32.
- 33.
Hoeyer (2010).
- 34.
Pfeffer (forthcoming) is currently undertaking important work aimed at uncovering many of these everyday transplant technologies that are rarely debated, focusing in particular on cornea and skin. Other transplant types stimulating limited public and ethical interest are dura mater (brain covering tissue) which has been transplanted since 1925 and arteries, tendons, and other tissue bits (Dexter 1965; Prolo 1981; Wilson 1947).
- 35.
This same point could be made in relation to ubjects used in studies of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) (Franklin 1997; Strathern 1995; Thompson 2005); see also Clarke (1995, 1998) and Morgan (2002, 2003). For an anthropological study specifically emphasizing the agency of the embryo, see Konrad (1998).
- 36.
See discussion in Chap. 1 I use the term in the following in ways closely related to what Strathern talks about as merographic connections in After Nature but I continue to use the notion of partial connections to avoid overemphasizing the difference between the theorizing of anthropologists and their informants (Strathern 1995).
- 37.
Strathern (2009:151).
- 38.
Landecker (2007).
- 39.
Brown (2009), Brown et al. (2006b, c), Eriksson and Webster (2008), Sperling (2004), Waldby (2006), Waldby and Squier (2004), and Williams et al. (2003). Susanne Lundin has interviewed research participants in xenotransplantation trials and found that from the patient’s perspective it was not necessarily the technology that was seen as causing confusion; it could also be viewed as an attempt of creating order and wholeness in bodies experiencing disorder and disease (Lundin 2002).
- 40.
The early announcement in the 1920s of an immortal chicken cell line was surrounded by quite a lot of attention, as an exception to the rule. It was much later found out that it was probably not immortal but constantly recreated with new cells (Skloot 2010). Duncan Wilson (2005) has argued that the early tissue culture research in the UK was actively engaging the media in attempts to raise expectations and get support for the research. This strategy failed, as the sociology of expectations has subsequently shown to be common (Brown and Michael 2003). Most cell lines remain unknown in the wider public.
- 41.
- 42.
Pfeffer and Laws (2006).
- 43.
See, for example, Cambon-Thomsen (2004), Greely (2007), Kaye (2006), and Winickoff and Winickoff (2003). Important work by anthropologists, sociologists, and STS scholars has shown the differences between the policy framing of biobanks and the concerns of the donating public; see for example, Busby and Martin (2006), Ducournau (2007), Haddow et al. (2007), Pálsson and Rabinow (2005), Skolbekken et al. (2005), and Tutton (2007). I have written about such differences in Hoeyer (2006b) and provided a review of the biobank literature which criticizes its single-minded focus on informed consent in Hoeyer (2008).
- 44.
- 45.
Healy (2006). Healy faces a very different type of blood donation system, however, because today most blood is thoroughly processed and made into specialized products. In the process, not only the blood but also the monetary aspects take on new forms. Before any blood products reach the veins of the recipients, many private actors have made a living on their manufacture and distribution. We are poorly equipped to understand this type of economy with the theoretical tools delivered in the pro/con market model literature, and Chap. 4 faces that challenge.
- 46.
- 47.
Similarly, in a study from Denmark, Mette Nordahl Svendsen found that the actual couples donating embryos did not consider it fervently problematic to donate embryos for stem cell research. They found it more problematic to donate them to other infertile couples. For the couples, the relation constructed with the national welfare state through the donation was part of ingraining the research endeavors with legitimacy. By donating to research, the couples saw themselves contributing to a national community and to future public health efforts, which was in fact easier than becoming related to specific couples potentially giving birth to a child (Svendsen 2007). See also Simpson (2004).
- 48.
Turkle (2008). Ott, for example, describes how artificial eyes have been applied differently to different classes: in the nineteenth century the poor were operated for preventive measures (so that a disease would not spread), while the “educated classes” could wait with operations until they were absolutely necessary (Ott 2002a, b). These decisions reflected a strong tradition for reading class relationships through bodily deficiencies; see also Blackwell (2004) for his work on class and body in the eighteenth century.
- 49.
- 50.
- 51.
- 52.
Epidemiological studies of breast operations question the ability of bodily transformation to satisfy the need for self-confidence. Women who undergo breast reductions or enlargements suffer from increased mortality compared to the average population: the group undergoing enlargement due to many different diseases related also to so-called lifestyle choices but especially due to higher rates of suicide, while the group undergoing reductions performs better on all other health indicators relative to the average population but has increased mortality in relation to higher suicide rates (Jacobsen et al. 2004).
- 53.
Kent (2003).
- 54.
- 55.
On using biology to probe our thinking, see also the discussion in Grosz (2004).
- 56.
http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/hmp/ See Turnbaugh et al. (2007) for a description of the project and McGuire et al. (2008) and Nerlich and Hellsten (2009) for analyses of its social and ethical implications.
- 57.
- 58.
Margulis and Sagan (1987).
- 59.
Hird (2009:84).
- 60.
Haraway (1991:207).
- 61.
Kauffman (1970:258–9).
- 62.
Rabinow (1993). Rabinow’s oft-cited article on Galton’s regret, in which he made the argument that Galton was disappointed about the inability of fingerprinting to deliver a stable proof from which typologies of humans could be deducted, has later been criticized for ignoring the fact that attempts of linking fingerprints to social categories such as race and homosexuality continued with some amount of “success” well into the 1990s (Cole 2004). On forensic uses of genetics, see Cho and Sankar (2004), Derksen (2000), Lazer (2004), and Williams and Johnson (2004), and for a historical note on anthropology’s own early attempts of defining the essence of humanity, see Hecht (2003).
- 63.
Keller (2000). The issue of informatization has been explored by Waldby, Parry, and Tacker, among others (Parry 2004a, b; Thacker 2005; Waldby 2000), and the historical junctures involved are discussed in Garlick (2006). One of the reasons for me to focus on the ubject is to counterbalance the interest in informatization and focus on the materiality of the ubjects.
- 64.
The results of the public and private effort were published in the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium (2001) and Venter et al. (2001). For a discussion of the subsequent challenges to the finitude of the findings, see, for example, Lock (2005), Marks (2003), and Noble (2006). The implications of the tendency for genetic determinism have been discussed at great length in the social sciences; see, for example, Finkler et al. (2003), Hedgecoe (2000), and Rothstein (2005).
- 65.
Dear (2009).
- 66.
Kristeva (1982:3).
- 67.
Green (2008:72).
- 68.
Merleau-Ponty (2002:140).
- 69.
She writes: “Therefore the categories of subject and object are not antipoles; rather, paraphrasing Latour, they come together as hybrids, which is a fruitful way of looking at the body parts of organ donors” (Jensen 2010:77).
- 70.
- 71.
Frazer (1993 [1890]:233).
- 72.
- 73.
- 74.
For a discussion of using substances as means of communication and relation building, see Hutchinson (2000).
- 75.
Durkheim (2008:137).
- 76.
Douglas (1995:12).
- 77.
Turner (1967), quotes from pages 102, 96–97, and 110.
- 78.
Squier (2004).
- 79.
- 80.
Elias (1994). Mauss has also written on the topic of embodiment of social structures (Mauss 2007) using the notion of habitus long before Bourdieu (2000) made it common parlance. Another contribution to the understanding of embodiment of historical shifts is Connorton’s work on bodily memory (Connerton 1989).
- 81.
- 82.
Cromley (1990) and Cromley (1996). If one were to write this history of changed notions of bodily purification, it would be important to include not only the historical rise of measures of hygiene (Armstrong 2002; Bashford 2004) but also the emergence of commodities such as dispensable sanitary towels and other intimate products facilitating self-purification while creating commercial value (Shail 2007). There is perhaps yet an interesting dimension to the story of coproduction and mutual interdependence between changes in management of body “waste” and the rise of the capitalist mode of production: Abelove suggests that the population rise in the UK in 1680–1830 that produced a crucial labor reserve for industrialization can only be explained with changed understandings of sexual relations. All acts that did not aim at the direct deposit of male sperm in a female vagina became abject, and as a consequence, more babies were born (Abelove 2007).
- 83.
Schlick (1966).
- 84.
Morris (1991).
- 85.
Schopenhauer (2004, 2006). This notion of will resonates with mainstream social science in as far as it is dealing with motivation and agency in manners that do not reduce motivation to intention and action to logocentric planning (Hastrup 1995). It makes an odd fit with most moral philosophy, however, where the focus tends to be on “free will” as a cognitive capacity to choose between available options and bear the responsibility for one’s choice (Hoeyer and Lynöe 2006). In my view, responsibility need not presuppose intentional, conscious choice, but my point here is not about responsibility as such, but about the basic experience of will and its importance for the phenomenological experience of subjecthood.
- 86.
Nietzsche (2000:219).
- 87.
- 88.
Nietzsche (2000:218).
- 89.
- 90.
Jackson (1998:24).
- 91.
Sometimes people feel very strongly that something is not-me, though the medical profession does not acknowledge their longings. In Carl Elliott’s (2003) work, we learn about the amputees by choice movement lobbying to have limbs amputated for the simple reason that they do not feel that a particular arm or leg is part of them. Such cases only underline the impossibility of establishing a universal norm for bodies but also how body norms are established in a wider biopolitical context.
- 92.
- 93.
Canguilhem (1978:132). This basic insight is often sidestepped, however, in search of a secure base in “nature” from which we might derive value judgments. One of the most famous attempts of a natural concept of disease is stated in Boorse (1977) used by, among others, Norman Daniels (1982, 1988) in his laudable attempts of arguing for a right to healthcare.
- 94.
Canguilhem (1978:82).
- 95.
Canguilhem (1978:175).
- 96.
Elliott (2003).
- 97.
Mol and Law (2004:45).
- 98.
Wittgenstein (2001).
- 99.
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Hoeyer, K. (2013). What Is a Human Body?. In: Exchanging Human Bodily Material: Rethinking Bodies and Markets. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5264-1_3
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