Filed under: A/V 4002 | Tags: atavism, culture, Deleuze Guattari, Dollhouse, H. G. Wells, Joss Whedon, Kafka, Mille Plateaux, Ollivier Dyens, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Metamorphosis
In chapter 3 of “The Rise of Cultural Bodies”, Metal and flesh: the evolution of man : technology takes over, by Ollivier Dyens, the idea of the body as a living mesh is explored, that when transformed — naturally or artificially — can no longer exist as it did before. It becomes a new being “creating in life’s outer-limits, their own body, their own system, their own territory, harvesting, as a consequence, both their liberation and their imprisonment.” (p.63) Only with a marriage of the cultural and the organic can these transformations be understood. Some good examples are used from Kafka‘s The Metamorphosis and H. G. Wells‘ The Island of Dr. Moreau, to illustrate the transformative power of biology “grinding” against culture.
As the Deleuze-Guattari book Mille Plateaux indicates a “non-linear mutant and ‘cancerous’ transformation caused by the grinding.” (p.57, Dyens) They point to the formation of ‘plastic bodies’ born from the unsure binary: biology/culture.
Our bodies are “like eggs immersed in soft fluid representations whose organs are both everywhere and nowhere … without limits, borders, evolution … lifeforms turned into signs … that have become alive — plastic bodies.” (p.57, Dyens) Clones are an example of this plastic body as explored in the Joss Whedon tv series Dollhouse (2009). The idea that technology is changing us and causing us to be unable to reconcile our dual nature — human/animal, human/machine or skin/culture — resolves to find answers, as Dyens puts it, in the transformation process itself. A moving target with a porous quality to it, that can on the one hand escape social repressiveness and, on the other, become a social pariah. Kafka’s work frames the situation well, herein the power of patriarchal domination can assert itself and push us into the defeated beatnik position, however we can also be that moving target and use the same tools of production to keep transforming. “Only the coupling between culture and the organic can respond … the framework of a new evolution” (p.62, Dyens). Our body imprisons us while our culture liberates us. The threat, as visited in Dollhouse, comes from Patriarchal conformity and mind erasures. Culture is memory, which reveals to us the history of manipulation, and yet also points the way to reconciliation of our transgressions. Also, culture helps us remember, with narrative, so we don’t get caught in Patriarchy’s repetitive normalizing. The dollhouse itself, in Dollhouse, serves as an anchor, for newly ‘brain-wiped’ people, to something familiar yet void of substance or culture. Their resting area acts like a transparent grave or ghost tomb which reinforces the idea that without a memory, they are only plastic people — like bodies without organs, without culture. However, the mind-erasures don’t clear all atavistic memory since it occurs at a structural level.
Our psyche may have been transformed, by technology, into “soft fluid representations…turned into ‘living’ signs”, but reconciliation can take place. Our structural building blocks do imprison us, just like the technological mediums impose a framework of interaction, however we choose the content or rather our level of engagement with that content — depending on our ability to deconstruct our ‘imprisonment’, like the ‘Echo’ character in Dollhouse. We become “non-linear mutants” that either, proactively face the “‘cancerous transformation caused by the grinding” of our biology with our culture, or reactively engage and are more susceptible to patriarchal-normative manipulation. We ‘harvest’ our own ‘liberation’ and reconciliation with our ‘imprisonment’. Failure to arrive at a reconciliation allows the ‘cancer’ to grow and dwarf, or even kill, our sense of culture.
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