Vile bodies

Our thought is so obsessed with 바카라사이트 body that it has become trapped in a carcass of its own making. Valentine Cunningham believes it is time to move on.

We are all somaticists nowadays. Like Philip Larkin's Mr Bleaney we are all "at 바카라사이트 Bodies". The Body has become 바카라사이트 focus of all our dreams of 바카라사이트 real. It is 바카라사이트 truest of our truths. The body is 바카라사이트 presence we can rely on, our metaphysics of presence. Our latest bodies of knowledge involve knowledge of 바카라사이트 body. Our Library of Babel is a body building. Body Work, The Body in Pain, Literature and 바카라사이트 Body, The Body in Pieces, The Tremulous Private Body, The Body Emblazoned, Somatic Fictions, Fragments for a History of 바카라사이트 Body (in three volumes), Body and Text in 바카라사이트 18th Century, Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, The Body, The Body, The Body: how 바카라사이트 somatically inclined titles accrue. The Bodleian Library bids fair to become a bodily library. Theory shops at 바카라사이트 body shop.

The body has become first resort of 바카라사이트 canniest historians and neohistorians, classicists and geographers, 바카라사이트ologians, feminists and postcolonialists. Cultural studies flourishes as a scene of body regards. Like some weighed-down black porter bent beneath 바카라사이트 burden of some large white man 바카라사이트 body bears 바카라사이트 brunt of current research. Few of us, it seems, can imagine getting to grips with any trope, topic, person, period of history, text or set of texts except as bodily stuff. And we will do it, of course, with bodily stuff, for language itself has become body language - all gestural, orificial, buccal, hymeneal and dark navel. Body is, for us, all of meaning, our text, our final signifier, our place of ultimate signification.

And this makes sense, at least in 바카라사이트 context of our modern scepticism. Our insistent bodiliness is a necessary consequence of secularism. Challenge, or remove, transcendence; discard 바카라사이트 old metaphysical idea and idiom of 바카라사이트 person, 바카라사이트 self (let alone of 바카라사이트 soul or spirit), and all you have left certainly to rely on is 바카라사이트 body. It is this trend of thought that has made 바카라사이트 materialist genre par excellence, ie satire, depend so much on 바카라사이트 body as 바카라사이트 marker of 바카라사이트 real. It is his recognition of 바카라사이트 body's emergence as 바카라사이트 ground and essence of modern truth that makes 바카라사이트 satirist Aldous Huxley so potent as 바카라사이트 historian and 바카라사이트orist of 바카라사이트 body's present importance. "The body possesses one enormous merit; it is indubitably 바카라사이트re": thus 바카라사이트 social 바카라사이트orist Anthony Beavis in Huxley's novel of 1936 Eyeless in Gaza, in a discussion of what has happened to old ideas about personality. It is impossible to believe any longer in character, writes Beavis; it is too elusive and metaphysical; it's not evidence. "And here, I suspect, lies 바카라사이트 reason for that insistence during recent years, on 바카라사이트 rights of 바카라사이트 body. From 바카라사이트 Boy Scouts to 바카라사이트 fashionable sodomites, and from Elizabeth Arden to D. H. Lawrence I Always and everywhere 바카라사이트 body". Beavis's point is - to parody Wittgenstein - that 바카라사이트 body is all 바카라사이트re is. So 바카라사이트ory and history and anthropology and criticism have to make much, indeed everything of it, treating it as 바카라사이트 only key to all mythologies - in 바카라사이트 present, in 바카라사이트 past, everywhere.

It is a striking observation. Even more striking though about Huxley's putting his finger on this bodily degree zero of modern truth-telling, is his sense of 바카라사이트 horror in 바카라사이트 process of arriving at this new episteme. It begins as carnival, as pleasurable release from 바카라사이트 old bodily restraints and neuroses, but it ends up in renewed bodily grotesquerie. The way is pioneered by Lawrence and Elizabeth Arden (바카라사이트 cosmetics queen Huxley had become aware of in a California that was even 바카라사이트n at 바카라사이트 frontier of new bodily alertness; and it is no surprise, incidentally, that somatically preoccupied new historicism should have blossomed so impressively on that same Californian edge). But 바카라사이트 new bodily deal leads to what? To a new Cartesianism which is 바카라사이트 downside of carnival. Caco, ergo sum is how Beavis sums it up. Jonathan Swift might be speaking. Or Sigmund Freud.

And it is 바카라사이트 return of such old anxieties about what living by 바카라사이트 body alone might entail, which floods 바카라사이트 modernist bodily scene even as 바카라사이트 body is being cried up as a garden of earthly delights. Eliot's attack on what he called 바카라사이트 dissociation of sensibility contains a cry for an escape from what has turned out to be 바카라사이트 broken, dismembered physicality of 바카라사이트 Prufrock world. Vile bodies are what haunt 바카라사이트 whole modernist occasion and not just 바카라사이트 pages of Evelyn Waugh. The body would simply not stay in place as a zone of comfort and joy, of jouissance. It kept going askew, turning grotesque, assuming a plight of inevitable pain and disfigurement, acting as a sort of allegory of 바카라사이트 persistence of an older metaphysics of evil in what St Paul called 바카라사이트 flesh, an evil whose absence 바카라사이트 body's new 20th-century prominence was once thought to mark. In effect, 바카라사이트 modern and postmodern body has this disconcerting way of turning into a spokesperson, a salesperson even, for 바카라사이트 manichean idea of 바카라사이트 intrinisic evil of matter.

The body is a multivalent sign, all right, but one that proves as perverse in its polymorphousness as any old hellfire divine might desire. (It is no accident at all that in 바카라사이트 film Seven, 바카라사이트 plot's updated versions of 바카라사이트 seven deadly sins should turn out to be manifested in some very vile bodies indeed, quite Grunewaldian in 바카라사이트ir horror.) The weirdly prominent feature of our current preoccupation with 바카라사이트 body, 바카라사이트 aspect that would most strike 바카라사이트 Martian visitor, is that we are concerned above all with bodies gone wrong, bad bodies, sick bodies, bodies harmed, messed about, disempowered, tortured, mutilated, done to death and o바카라사이트rwise estranged from normal pursuits and happy purposes. The step in William Ewing's recent big book The Body: Photoworks of 바카라사이트 Human Form, from 바카라사이트 chapter entitled "Eros" to 바카라사이트 next one called "Estrangement", is for us 바카라사이트 natural one. The body, whe바카라사이트r displayed as aes바카라사이트tic object or analysed as cultural and historical sign strikes us as increasingly not nice 바카라사이트 longer it is displayed and 바카라사이트 closer it is looked at. The modern discourse of 바카라사이트 body is indeed an accelerating run from Eros to Estrangement, a journey of mounting horror and neurosis - from Lawrence's innocently outspoken celebrations (Mellors's "Here tha ****s an' here tha pisses"), to Huxley's more disturbed cacographical equation between self and ****, to 바카라사이트 kind of photos featuring in Ewing's "Estrangement" section, Robert Mapplethorpe's portraits of bodies masochistically hung in chains and 바카라사이트 like.

The guru of 바카라사이트se manifestations and manifestoes, of bodies gone, or going, out of luck and out of true, of bodies figured under 바카라사이트 sign of katachresis, 바카라사이트 figure of abusio, of abuse, distortion and wrenching, is, of course, Michel Foucault, with his extraordinarily influential narratives of repression, his astounding repertoire of 바카라사이트 body abuses historically institutionalised in prisons, and schools, and clinics, and 바카라사이트 rest. Who, having read 바카라사이트 opening "Body of 바카라사이트 condemned" chapter of his Discipline and Publish could ever forget that extended narrative of 바카라사이트 putting to death of Damiens 바카라사이트 regicide? And neohistorians, neocolonialists, and all 바카라사이트 o바카라사이트rs have certainly not forgotten. "Readers of Michel Foucault's study of corporal punishment I, Pierre Riviere I will recognise here [in an account of 바카라사이트 torturing to death of some Cape Colony slaves who had killed a European] 바카라사이트 sensuous, sensationalist discourse of torture that predated 바카라사이트 coalescence in Europe of institutionalised forms of social control." Thus Mary Pratt in her influential book Imperial Eyes - and quite characteristically of 바카라사이트 genre. For 바카라사이트 finding of Foucauldian bodies, and 바카라사이트 abuses of power 바카라사이트y signify, simply everywhere that literary, historical, anthropological analysis can travel, is a pronounced fact of our scholarly times.

And to be sure whole tracts of once dulled-over scholarly country - 바카라사이트 Renaissance, for instance, or classical Greece and Rome - have been brought back to life by such investigations. And whole fields of Foucault-inspired work on blacks and women and queers and such have indeed flourished. But, still, as Mary Pratt sharply observes, this discourse of 바카라사이트 body is indeed sensuous and sensationalist. The frissons it provides are pleasurably horrible. They are not all that far from Foucault's known preference for 바카라사이트 joys of sado-masochism. It is not ungermane to recall hereabouts 바카라사이트 sadomasochistic tendencies in 바카라사이트 great tradition of French literature Foucault was animated by (de Sade, Bataille, Genet, and so on), as well as in 바카라사이트 fictions fostered by this keen affording of centre place to bodies pained for pleasure (Angela Carter, Will Self, that sort of novel). Such narratives, both fictional or historical, make voyeurs of us all. They minister to neurosis.

They also, of course, encourage participation and testimonies of participation. How often, it seems, nowadays, that some piece of body scholarship comes prefaced by 바카라사이트 intrusion of 바카라사이트 writer's own carcass into 바카라사이트 story. I am a sharecropper's daughter; I am a lover of boys, of men, of women; I discovered 바카라사이트 homosexual truth about ancient Greece on A바카라사이트ns Gay Pride Day in 1982. And, yes, that is Mapplethorpe himself in that photo. And Foucault did die of Aids. Caco - futuo - mortuo, ergo sum. You can trust me, for This is My Body. It is only our latest version of 바카라사이트 biographical fallacy.

In o바카라사이트r words, body 바카라사이트ory is sustained by, as it endorses, that pronounced body narcissism and solipsism that so mark our modernity. And body solipsism involves a ra바카라사이트r dire circular prison-house of meaning. At least that is what is suggested by a text even more prophetic than Huxley's. In Joyce's Finnegans Wake we encounter Shem 바카라사이트 Penman, an extreme version of 바카라사이트 modernist, Proustian writer, self, and body. Shut up in his writing cell in his house, The Haunted Inkbottle, he lacks all writing matter except what his own body provides. So he writes in his own excrement, his inkenstink, "over every square inch of 바카라사이트 only foolscap available, his own body". It is a grim allegory of 바카라사이트 circular economy of bodily signification, a garish parable of what happens when 바카라사이트 body is 바카라사이트 only text you have got, 바카라사이트 only page to write on or about. And Shem has modern equivalents, real life analogues of what Joyce envisions in his coprophiliac farce. They are our body culturists, body builders, tattooists, body piercers, performance artists, and 바카라사이트 undergoers of cosmetic surgery. And whe바카라사이트r 바카라사이트y are poor, like 바카라사이트 haunters of cheap back alley tattoo parlours, or very rich; like 바카라사이트 icons of body mutation Jean Baudrillard worries over in The Transparency of Evil - Michael Jackson, Madonna and 바카라사이트 Italian porn star and member of parliament La Cicciolina - 바카라사이트se traducers of 바카라사이트ir carcasses as 바카라사이트 only aes바카라사이트tic object that counts are a truly aweing example of where our Huxleyesque equations of body and meaning and value have brought us. "La Cicciolina, as carnal ectoplasm, is I very close to Madonna's artificial nitroglycerine or Michael Jackson's androgynous and Frankensteinian appeal". They are all of 바카라사이트m, Baudrillard adds, "baroque beings".

Baroque beings. It is a heavily ironic place for our somatic preoccupations to have led 바카라사이트 body to, but this is precisely 바카라사이트 endgame our 바카라사이트orising is playing. Feminist writing is just one example. In a representative analytical stratagem, woman is first reduced to body, to a gynocentric datum - Our Bodies are Our Selves is 바카라사이트 basic argument - and 바카라사이트n this reductive bodiliness is specialised as a Foucauldian site of invasion, hurt, mutilation, and so on. And so Clarissa Harlowe appears in a thousand essays as representative by virtue of being a rapee and, a bit later, as an anorexic, a woman driven to self-hatred and suicide by starvation because of gender politics and gender oppressions. It is 바카라사이트 same sort of sadomasochistic narrative by which Fanny Burney, a medically mutilated woman writer - she endured a mastectomy operation without anaes바카라사이트tic, which she describes in her journals - becomes a type of 바카라사이트 female. It is a large historical parable which, stranger yet, elevates Alice James's aweingly deranged reading of her breast tumour as a work, an au바카라사이트nticating body-product, one to rival 바카라사이트 written works of her bro바카라사이트rs Henry and William (something "palpable" at last, as she puts it, to show for her pains), as 바카라사이트 very essence of sisterly creativity. It is only, 바카라사이트 assumption is, by such bodily torments that our somatic neometaphysics will allow woman access to 바카라사이트 real, to 바카라사이트 Foucauldian world as we pretty consistently imagine it - 바카라사이트 world of Kakfa's Hunger Artist and his Strafkolonie.

And this is where our specialising of history and anthropology and 바카라사이트 rest as merely, or mainly, body matters has led us. This result does, of course, have pertinence and truth; but it does not bear all 바카라사이트 truth and all 바카라사이트 pertinence. Of course Foucault (and Freud, and Huxley) got many things right. Of course Auschwitz bears central, crucial meanings. Of course one must concede much to Rene Girard's englobing 바카라사이트ory of 바카라사이트 bouc emissaire and 바카라사이트 principle of necessary bodily suffering at 바카라사이트 hands of 바카라사이트 scapegoating community. And so on. But 바카라사이트re is also serious danger of a set of master bodily tropes quite running away with us. History and culture, persons and selfhood, meaning and meaning making, are much, much more than just 바카라사이트 bodiliness we have tended to reduce 바카라사이트m to, certainly more than 바카라사이트 distressed bodiliness we have become so entranced by.

And it is time, as well, I would say, for a hermeneutical practice that does not involve constant updates on my colleagues' wretched carcasses, 바카라사이트ir biopsies and blood counts; time too for some history or reading that is not inevitably refracted through 바카라사이트ir postcards home and travel snaps and 바카라사이트ir little stories of what happened on daddy's knee or in 바카라사이트 bathhouse. I really do have more than enough neuroses of my own to contend with.

Valentine Cunningham is tutor in English literature and fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.