LIFESCIENCE: Re: LIFESCIENCE

[Eugene Thacker <maldoror@eden.rutgers.edu>]

---------------------------------------------------------
ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 99
LIFESCIENCE
Linz, Austria, September 04 - 09
http://www.aec.at/lifescience
---------------------------------------------------------
Enzo Minarelli wrote:
> 
> Again, is the human body worth being experienced like an object apart
> from any ethical rules or consideration? (That really reminds me of the
> past experiences done by the now dead beat poet, Allen Ginsberg, with
> drugs taken by his own body in South and Central America).
> 
> I’ve always been thinking that science ought to be nourished through a
> symbiotic mixture represented by the ways of rationalism (Gadamer) and
> the instinct forces (Vico). 

There seem to be two primary questions in your email, Enzo - one dealing
with a long-standing tradition in the West between so-called rational
thought incorporated into social and political practices, and those
(equally tenuously-labelled) non-rational, experiential, and
phenomenological forms of thought also rooted in a variety of activities.

Of course the interesting thing here is not so much in attempting to
define the boundaries which would set up a debate or discussion between
"art" and "science" as subjective and objective practices, but rather to
ask about instances where those boundaries (and again, we have yet to
really question how effective or meaningful such boundaries are) begin
to get messy. But I think this has to be more than simply a "third
option" that is either totally new or a consolation between two polarities.

While, on the one hand, it can be very easy to assume that there are in
fact defininte boundaries between the sciences and non-sciences, alot of
these assumptions break down when considering the heterogeneity of
scientific fields - within what's referred to as "biotech" alone, there
is an amazing diversity of different research threads and projects, each
wired into different social-medical-political-global networks.

Three examples come to mind:
- First, the links between cybernetics and developments in auteopoietic
theory (an area which I don't claim to be an expert...) involve
interesting negotiations with the role of the subject & phenomenology.
Second-wave cybernetics (e.g., Foerster) was forced to take into account
the "role of the observer" in the cybernetic loop, which seemed to
include the previously-assumed "objective" viewer as a subject, and
which added a layer of complexity and self-referentiality which led in
part to autopoiesis. However this was not simply phenomenology or a
privileging of experience, but a complex incorporation of the
experiencing, sensing subject into a larger paradigm. It is interesting
to see Varela (one of the early theorists of autopoiesis) currently
working in the direction of cognition and the "embodied mind" (title of
his latest book).
- Second is Emily Martin's book _Flexible Bodies_, which I'm currently
reading, & which is an inquiry into how immunology and disease is
manifested in different contexts (from the research lab to community
health centers to understanding of non-specialists). What's interesting
about it is that the discourse of immunology is not simply divided by
specialist/medical knowledge and non-specialist/popular knowledge, but
criss-crossed by a range of different concepts of the body and disease
circulated through particular channels (treatment, personal testimony,
popular culture, prevention & sanitation practices, transmission of
research knowledge, etc.). In the midst of these threads it seems to be
increasingly difficult to assume a divided scientific and
non-scientific, objective and subjective perspective.
- Finally, I find that history is always instructive in some way. It is
interesting that, for all the hegemony that anatomical science holds on
representations of the human body (from basic notions of "anatomically
correct" to the visible and corporeal markers of abnormality, bodily
ideals, and disability), one finds, during the early modern period,
mostly in southern European cultural centers, a gradually-emerging
"science" of the study of the structure, parts, and relationships of
parts, in the human body. As deeply engaged in new modes of
representation, anatomical texts of the early Renaissance were less
scientific tracts, than artistic and encyclopedic collaborations. In
addition, a constant source of tension for anatomical science was
whether it constituted a philosophy (in the tradition of natural
philosophy) or whether it was a lower form of practical research
subordinate to medicine.


Eugene


-- 
]]]] bioinformatic bodies ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] _
]]]]]]]]]]]]] http://gsa.rutgers.edu ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] _
]]]]]] ftp_formless_anatomy ]]]]]]]] http://www.formless.org ]]]]]]]] _
]]]]]]]]]]]]]] maldoror@eden.rutgers.edu ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] _ ]]]]]]]]]]]]
_ ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] _ ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] _
]]]]]]]]]]] Fake_Life Platform ]]]]
http://web.t0.or.at/fakeshop/fake_life.html ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] _ ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
You are subscribed to the English language version of LIFESCIENCE
To unsubscribe the English language version send mail to
lifescience-en-request@aec.at (message text 'unsubscribe')
Send contributions to lifescience@aec.at
--------------------------------------------------------------------------