This is the first – and incomplete – draft for the call for papers to the winter-symposium. Please comment, elaborate and make suggestions for improvements.
CFP: The Word becoming Flesh
Process, Design & Aesthetics
According to Freud ”Man has become, so to speak, a God with artificial limbs [eine Art Prothesengott]” (in Civilization and Its Discontents (1929)). Equipped with ”all his auxiliary organs”, man has advanced to an almost god-like eminence. But, Freud warns, “let us also remember that modern man does not feel happy with his god-like nature.”
Recently, the Index Award 2007 rewarded “design that substantially improves important aspects of human life”. Design is not just about aesthetics, it should improve life as well. Thus, the Canadian designer Sébastian Dubois was awarded for his low-cost, high-quality prosthetic foot, designed to help victims of landmines in especially the Third World.
Although other animals use tools as well, it is man alone who seeks to improve or even replace his natural dispositions. Tools and technologies are to be regarded as extensions of man, according to Marshall McLuhan. That is, technology is not something exterior to man. Biology and technology are not to be seen as antithetical to one another. When it comes to the use of tools and technology, evolution is no longer just a question of natural selection, as claimed by Darwin, but a process that involves innovation and design as well. Thus, any technology is a step towards the post-human.
Whether you believe man was created by God or not, the idea of improving God’s original design has haunted the imagination for ages. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the epitome of man’s attempt at being God. Today, for instance stem cell research seems to bring us closer to what was fiction just recently. What used to be words is rapidly becoming flesh.
In more general terms, design can be regarded as extensions of man. A knife is not just a tool for cutting. The design of the knife makes it a more or less functional extension of human faculties. Albeit the knife is not ‘flesh’, it becomes a supplement to the ‘flesh’ that improves the natural disposition. It is not just about the technology – that the knife is able to cut – but about the design as well: how does the knife fit to the hand, which design is the most efficient in transferring muscular force to the blade of the knife and so on.
Recently, design has been used in the notion of “intelligent design”. To some, the Darwinian theory of evolution cannot account for the complexity of life; consequently, the evolution of life has to be attributed to some kind of intelligence (i.e. divine power). Evolution is progressing according to a grander scheme, a design. Although “intelligent design” appears to be an attempt to give scientific credibility to the biblical account of Genesis, the use of the notion of design is interesting. When a more scientific approach to dissection began to become customary during the Renaissance, it was the mechanics of the body that was at the focal point of attention. The body was a machine (Descartes) created by The Great Mechanic or Watchmaker – or indeed Designer. The insights into the mechanics of the body machine made it possible to repair, replace and improve parts of the machine and thus improve the design. This has had a tremendous impact on medicine and medicinal technology – and has been decisive for the development and design of tools and technology as well. And not least, the idea of the mechanical body has been an incentive for the imagination as manifested in popular culture, science fiction and film (from Frankenstein to The Terminator and Blade Runner).
The purpose of this seminar is to see design as an approach to how we became post human (N. Katherine Hayles) and how the word becomes flesh. The approach can be the singular design: how an idea transmutes to a workable tool, a liveable urban environment or a useable technology. Or it could be a historical approach to medicine, biology, anatomy and art on ‘the design’ of the body and life; that is, the development of the paradigm of the mechanical body. Or indeed, how the design of the body has proliferated in the popular imagination of science fiction and film.
Literature
Braidotti, Rosi. Metamorphoses – Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Cambridge: Polity, 2002.
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman – Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Massumi, Brian: “Interface and Active Space. Human-Machine Design“, 1995
Sawday, Jonathan. The Body Emblazoned – Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture. London: Routledge, 1995.
