HOW THE NEW TECHNOLOGIES WORK ON THE CURRENT FEMALE BODY
RESEARCH QUESTION
Do we have the possibility of break down the woman’s representation inherent to the gender of the body, through the application of the new technologies in/on the female body, in the art field?
KEY WORDS
Body, gender, art, new technologies, woman.
ABSTRACT
This article attempts to research about the female body representation in art practices, like a way to articulate or dismantle the gender, in this case feminine gender, which is the most important cultural construction about woman meaning.
This female body studied here, is related to the New technologies, which includes scientific and medical technologies of the body like great modifiers of the body and identity concepts, together with the Net and Virtual Reality like new means and spaces of communication and construction.
Through the different social and artistic theories, I try to establish the main characteristics of the current physical body, and specifically, the woman’s body, within the context and the changes made by the technologies, and practices used in the modern medicine, and science. These factors involve discussions such as the human body fragmentation, composition and replacement (ie. Prosthesis), the socialization of the nature, or the boundaries between the real body and the individual identity.
Regarding to the representation of the body, there is a huge imaging growing in the field of medicine and science, gaining power, and keeping the stereotypes of the gendered body. But regarding the female body, related to these new technologies, the art practices work as one of the leading practices which shows some materialization of the female gender’s concepts, through different cultures, which can breaks the ones established, and builds new ones.
INTRODUCTION
There was a time, were the humans were in the middle of existence. They though that they were in the center of the world, living in a round shape Earth, with the Sun going around us, until the discovery of the existence of galaxies and an infinite Universe, moments when they felt smaller, like a drop of water in the ocean. And with Darwin theory of species, they definitely lost the aura of being special God’s creations to be other specie in a chain of animals.
Now, huge changes are happening in the human him/herself. An example of that is the fact that the identity multiplies in the cyberspace and the Net, or the wide conceptual and physical changes of the body, which leave the “natural” and complete concept of an organism or system, to give way to a fragmented body, with interchangeable parts, with the background that currently, the body is being considered more as an imperfect object, or a machine that can be improved.
“Bodybuilding, colored contact lenses, liposuction, an other technological innovations have subtly altered the dimensions and markers of what counts as a “natural” body. Even as techno-science provides the realistic possibility of replacement body parts, it also enables a fantastic dream of immortality and control over life and death. (…) Although the popularization of new body technologies disseminates new hopes and dreams of corporeal reconstruction and physical immortality, it also represses and obfuscates our awareness of new strains on and threats to the material body.”
(Balsamo, 1997, p.1-2)
Like we can read in this extract of “Technologies of the gendered body”, some of the main factors changing the conception of the body, and with that, the relationship between body and identity, or the society, are the new studies and applications of the science and modern medicine, just as the development of new technologies, and new communication means and spaces, such as Cyberspace and the Net.
TECHNOLOGIES, SCIENCE, MEDICINE AND BODIES
In general the discussions about the medicine, and its technologies applied to the body, multiply as much as discoveries, researches and applications have on the body.
To begin with, the importance of the medicine in our lives, can been seen through how we have assumed the terms and concepts in our daily life language (David Le Breton, 1994 : 201), and also, how doctors or society can refer to a body without illness, like a sickly one, because is out of the standard (i.e. is not a perfect one, or far to reach the ideal body, in western beauty terms) or it doesn’t work properly in one or more functions, like the reproduction, which is not a danger for the life of the person. This way, we find a new vision of the body as a degraded and imperfect machine susceptible to the changes of its parts in a way to get a more optimum machine.
“(…) la carne del hombre que encarna su parte maldita según innumerables sectores de la tecnociencia, se adhieren, felizmente, para remodelar, rehacer, «inmaterializar», transformar en mecanismos controlables, para de alguna manera liberar al hombre del embarazoso arraigo carnal donde maduran la fragilidad y la muerte2. Este cuerpo denigrado no encuentra resto de valor más que en su asimilación a la máquina. Frente al problema de su constitución carnal, el cuerpo se disocia del hombre al que encarna y se considera como uno en sí mismo. Así, la biotecnología o la medicina moderna privilegian al mecanismo corporal, la disposición en engranajes de un organismo percibido como una colección de órganos y de funciones potencialmente sustituibles.”
(Le Breton, 1994, p.198)
In this situation, where we confront this weak natural body, we put a lot of faith in the medicine, as example we have the organ transplants, and techno-science to improve our body, with a wide range of prosthesis, or aesthetic surgery. At the same time, the professionals with the right knowledge, the specialist of each subject, (doctors, etc.) turn to a privilege powerful position as transformers, engineers of the body, which have a main role in the making of decisions (like in some cases of plastic surgery), or some uses of the body (like in investigations on corpses).
On the other hand, the life and death of the body and the individual, and their bond, are redefined. The birth and death of this body, meant the beginning and the end of the person “attached” to this body:
“El nacer y el morir son dos experiencias que hasta hace poco tiempo marcaban
los límites del tránsito terrenal de todo ser humano. El nacimiento suponía
el inicio de una identidad social de un ser humano y la muerte era el fin.”
(Martínez Barreiro 2004, p.143)
But thanks to the new reproductive assistance technologies, the genetic engineering and the organs transplant, this condition is being redefined; and this condition, that before were natural, now they depend of each person’s decision. This is called nature socialization.
“Tanto las tecnologías de la reproducción asistida como los trasplantes de órganos necesitan, para su aplicación, nuevas categorías del cuerpo, de la identidad y de la existencia. Por una parte, las tecnologías de la reproducción asistida redefinen el inicio de la vida, del proceso de creación y de las relaciones filiativas. Por otra, las técnicas del trasplante de órganos dan lugar a una nueva definición de la muerte, de la identidad del cuerpo y de sus partes, así como de los límites de la vida. Las nuevas tecnologías son ejemplos de la capacidad de la ciencia y de la medicina, para construir imágenes sociales y culturales. Son exponentes del progresivo poder sobre el cuerpo y la vida. Lo que está ocurriendo forma parte de lo que A. Giddens (1995, 1998) denomina la «socialización de la naturaleza», expresión que hace referencia al hecho de que ciertos fenómenos que antes eran «naturales», o que venían dados por la naturaleza, ahora tienen un carácter social, es decir, que dependen de nuestras propias decisiones.”
(Martínez Barreiro, 2004, p.144)
The reproduction assistance technologies emphasize in the changes of the traditional believes about the beginning of the life, the genetic manipulation, the filial relationships or the creation process, while the organ transplants work in the redefinition of the death, prolonging the “life” of somebody organs in other body, and prolonging the life or the other people; and in the reorganization and participation of the society in it. (Juan Jerez, M. and Rodríguez Díaz, J.A., 1994)
Together with the redefinition of the relationship between body and identity of an individual, and the fragmentation of the body; also there is a reorganization of the body. Before it was the stopping heart the signal which determined a person life end, while today, is the brain death, the irreplaceable (until now) organ the one which dictates it, even with other organs still working. A new dualism emerges: brain-body.
BODY, GENDER AND TECHNOLOGIES
All these changes, are made in a flesh and bone body, but within a contextual body, with certain characteristics (i.e. a space and time; race, gender, age…) which are decisive factors in the cultural construction of the ideas around the identity, roles, status, etc. and the way we live our body in the society, within ourselves, and how we modify it. The gender is a cultural construction based on the difference of sexual and reproductive organs, which separate, male from female bodies, therefore, men’s stereotypes, and women’s stereotypes (Biological-determinist ideology).
From a long time now, there have been theories in a wide range of fields (sociological and political studies, or artistic theories) which have dealt with the gender (i.e. feminist studies) as one of the main differences between individuals in the society, above all noted by a domination and control above the woman being mean, and her body.
Besides, the woman’s identity is closest attached to her body than the man. This happens because there are more pressures on the female body, or her “gender” is nearer to a more exhaustive and concrete construction around the body. One example of the close relationship between the female body and her woman’s identity is the uterus as an organ of the reproductive task, and main organizer of the female role, the motherhood. A body already objectified, a beauty body, an erotic body, a fertile body. Currently, as well, in the consumer society, within the capitalism, the real body (now a product, and a process) is measured according to the ideal body, which we aim. Through the exercise (gyms), the healthy food (SO or free range), the hygienic, the life quality, we found more forces working around the modification of the body. The body, above all the female one, which was already subjugates to rituals such as the make up, the depilation, and the diets (Lee Barty, 1994, quoted by Martínez Barreiro, 2004, p.134), now jump directly to the surgery couch to rummage on the own flesh and the own bones, in search of the ideal body, and the eternal youth.
With the new techno-science and medicine, changing the concept of the body, the body itself, and the identity of the person owner of this body, can be the technologies a way to dismantle the gender attached to these modifiable and changeable organs? It doesn´t seem like that, because various reasons.
“Indeed, the gendered boundary between male and female is one border that remains heavily guarded despite new technologized ways to rewrite the physical body in the flesh”
(Balsamo, 1997, p.9)
Judy Wajcman in her work“Technofeminism” establishes the discussion of the technology and feminist studies.
To begin with, the new technologies aims and process related to the gender matter, have been long discussed by feminist authors since early 70s, and the fast develop of technologies in works and daily life, always with a negative perspective of the technology as a copy of the patriarchal model.
The knowledge and use of the technology is considered powerful, looking to the future, and the main role of it in this. Therefore, the technology serves as a tool of control, and domination over the present and the future. But one of the main worries of the liberal feminism, of this situation was the huge abscense of the women in these specialist areas, and therefore, a dependency on the male leading the technologies and the possibility of open the door into the technologies “world” to more number of women, was not a solution, since it assumed the fault of this abscense to the women ignoring other social factor, and a obligation of losing a femininity identity in favour of a manly condition of the woman. After this approach, the radical, socialist feminisms, and ecofeminism, turned their gaze towards the own nature of the technology and science, until this point, considered as a neutral, without interests fields, to reached the conclusion, both of this subject follow a patriarchal model, generally vilent, and a the aim was control and dominate the women and nature.
“la idea de que la propia tecnología occidental encarna los valores patriarcales y que su proyecto consiste en la dominación y control de las mujeres y de la naturaleza es un precepto importante del feminismo radical, del feminismo cultural y el ecofeminismo.”
(Wajcman, J. 2006, p.33)
Although these ideas have been also long reviewed, (an example was the basis of the woman as a pacific and passive victim of the technology) It is still in force the idea of technology as a tool of domination of nature and women, which is particularly interesting in the effects of the application in the female body, related to the biological reproduction.
The reproduction assistance technologies I mention previously, are generally seen as a beneficial advances, above the conquest of the life and death, and the controversial about this theme goes around, ethical, and the complexity relationships. But here there is another main factor, such as the consequences of the intrusion, control and surveillance of the medical technologies related to the female body, specifically, in the reproduction area.
“Nuestra sociedad considera como extremadamente beneficioso el avance en
la conquista de la vida y sobre la muerte. Sin embargo, a menudo se olvidan
los enigmas, ambigüedades, dilemas, contradicciones o transformaciones fundamentales que ello implica.”
(Montserrat Juan Jerez, M. and Rodríguez Díaz, J. A. 1994, p.174)
In one sense, there was and there is a positive point in the division of the sexuality and reproduction (i.e. contraceptive pills), and the growing quantity of women resort to this means, is a reality (freedom to choose when to have a child, or the possibility to have it when there are some complications).
But regarding to the ways of how the technology works, and aims of domination and control above the nature, there is a more exhaustive gaze to the female body, and into it. It seems the already control above the female body, its sexuality, and its fertility, now is stressed with the development of technologies each time more sophisticated.
As well too, the each time more improved images technologies, open the black space of the uterus (now visible, easy to manipulate), to show a fetus, the new life, now with identity, and that is not just as related to the mother, above which the society look at, keep an eye to (close surveillance: analysis, drugs test, etc.), but is more independent of her, and “belongs” also to the society, and is controlled by the medicine.
“Uno de los aspectos más significativos de este segundo grupo de tecnologías es la posibilidad de visualizar y por tanto otorgar identidad al ser que se está gestando. Durante el período del embarazo las técnicas de diagnóstico prenatal, como la miocentesis o los ultrasonidos, pueden detectar diversas anormalidades funcionales en el feto y su desarrollo. El mirar dentro del útero abre nuevas dimensiones médicas, sociales y éticas. El feto se convierte en un ser visible, con entidad propia, sobre el cual la mujer que lo gesta tiene una gran responsabilidad, pero al mismo tiempo ya no le pertenece por completo. La medicina adquiere un control parcial del feto gracias al proceso de visualización y la sociedad en su conjunto responsabilidad sobre el ser identificado como vivo.”
(Montserrat Juan Jerez, M. and Rodríguez Díaz, J. A. 1994, p.175)
Another point of the new changes of the body in the female body case, is the easily recognition and identification, of imperfect bodies, as illness ones.
Related to this ground, there is other kind of technologies applied with different aims, for male and female body, and social role, is the plastic surgery, specifically, the aesthetic surgery (of our own choice). Anne Balsamo devoted a chapter on her book Technologies of the gendered body, Reading cyborg woman to this theme, and show us how the unequal stereotypes of the gender are reinforced, now in the own flesh and deep in it.
There is a mayor consumption of this service by women, which shows a grater worries about the female physically and, close building of the identity through the body, to reach an ideal body, based in classical canons of western art, with a white woman as a model, and the aim to look younger (in comparison, when the men decide have a surgery of these characteristics, is because another motifs, such a status, and need for their careers, and professions, not as a narcissism act). This happens, on the one hand, because the pressure of the ideas of the gender (i.e. the femininity, which is considered a natural quality and choice, but is, in fact, other cultural construction) (Martínez Barreiro, 2004), and on the other hand, because the fashion of remodelling the body as a product, and process, a treasure as the only body we have, and its link to social status, such as the prettier, younger, and perfect you seem, the merrier, as I have written before about consumer society.
Therefore, the technologies have a big impact changing, or developing new stages of the human body, and the identity. It has huge beneficial consequences for both gender, and the society, even despite of the problematic around the limits of the uses, or the big gaps between value judgements, for example, with the religion, or the economic difference between people, to get some of the treatments. But when it comes to the gendered bodies, there are still unequally applications, usually distinguished by a bigger manipulation, and control of the female body, to reach patriarchal expectations, a reinforcing of the idea of their bodies as objects to improve.
Therefore, the “intrusion” on the techno-science and medical advances, are not equally on female bodies or male’s, and instead of release the stereotypes of gender attached in a huge way to a body already malleable, is this changeable condition the one transformer as a way to apply more them, this time not just to the surface, but the internal body.
“When the human body is fractured into organs, fluids, and genetic codes, what happens to gender identity? When the body is fractured into functional parts and molecular codes, where is the gender located? What is the relationship between reconstructed body parts and gender identity?”
(Balsamo, 1997, p.6)
Does it just depend on the uses and aims of the technology? By abolishing the sexual organs where the biological determinism rest, can we abolish also the gender, and therefore, some of the disparities? Can we escape of the inequality by disintegrating the gender? Can we keep our identity as women without gender?
IMAGE, ART AND THE REPRESENTATION OF THE BODY RELATED TO NEW TECHNOLOGIES.
There is a saying: A picture is worth a thousand words.
This suit perfectly the visual culture we are living in, where the images are a main source for the representation, in this case, body’s representation, therefore individual’s or social clichés’. Some kind of pictures have a special importance, just not showing the contents (usually contextual), but influencing and changing, concepts, and meanings.
The development of the technology of the medical images, has made placed in certain context, the power in the doctors and in the own image like is happening in some surgery consultation in the decision-making process, as Balsamo describe in the end of the Chapter Three: Cutting on the edge: Cosmetic Surgery and the New Imaging Technologies[1]. Or as we have seen in this essay before, the visualization of the fetus in the early stages in the uterus, give it a stronger identity before is born, and break partially the laces with the mother.
There’s no only, photography, but other list of means to catch in a paper or screen pictures of the body, like we never seen before.
“New medical imagining technologies such as laparoscopy and computer tomography (CT) make the body visible in such a way that its internal status can be assessed before it is laid bare or opened up surgically.”
Recently, together with the interest in the detailed and macro pictures of the different organs, cells, of the body; these tools are being assumed for other fields, far from the medicine (perhaps not that far), such as the journalism, and art field. An example of the separation of the medical photography and its medical duty, comes with Lennart Nilsson, which had taken photographs of “(…) inside of man down to the level of a cell” and “Throughout the years, a has devoted special attention to capturing the creation of a human being, from conception to birth.”[2] Many, after him, are portraying magnify detail of the inner body, like Kai-hung Fung[3], winner of the 5th annual International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge 2007, who uses radiography, and 3D computer tomography in the visual art, called Tomography art. Are this enlarge, colourful fragments the most suitable representation for the current human body? It is curious that we are living a body every time more fragmented, and artificial, and at the same time enlarged and more realistic. In a way the big fascination that wake up this pictures, is because the scientific background (the science seems to have the right, sometimes have the power of not being questionable), “neutral” vision, and because the concrete and detail picture we get of the subject, so it come to us like more realistic, but, if is not how we live our body, is it more real?
Here we see how the medicine and the science and the art field are juxtaposed. But the art is also, already, mixing in multiples ways within the science, and medicine by the hand of the technologies.
The art, was along the history and cultures, and is one of the main creators of images, influential images. It a medium transgressor, innovator with the power to question, of break, and change thoughts, concepts, stereotypes, politics, etc. and the technologies. Currently, there are a lot of different practices working with the body and the technologies, like Daito Manabe[4] trying to simulate facial expression through electrodes and computer programming, or Marilene Oliver[5] and he work Nesting, where she places 9 fetus in different phases of the pregnancy into crystal boxes shaped as matrioska dolls, such as some branch of the robotic art (dealing with the Hi-tech humans, prosthesis and cyborgs, like the artist Stelarc[6] in his Third Hand), the transgenical art (which deal with the imaginary and ideal bodies in real bodies, operating with the genetic engineering to exchange genetic material between different species like plants, animal, and human, as we can see in Eduard Kac’s[7] works), and carnal art (which works within the real body, situating the representation of the body, a body remodelled by surgery, in the own body, just as her creator Orlan[8] did in her body operations to assume in her own flesh the classical myths of beauty in art).
Some of these female artists, have already dig a hole in the uses of technologies on the female body, to foretell a negative future of the bodies, as Marina Nuñez[9] along her pieces, or to make an equal representation of the woman, the artist, but like a human portrait, with gender, race, etc. but through a brain as a neutral organ, which look the same for everybody, as the work Helen Chadwick[10] did Self-Portrait (1991).
CONCLUSION
Therefore, the “intrusion” on the techno-science and medical advances, are not equally on female bodies or male’s. The female body is still treated as an object which must be controlled, though currently in through new means, like the new technologies of the body.
“La tecnología, como solución médica, contribuye a perpetuar los prejuicios y perversiones del control sobre las mujeres”.
(Montserrat Juan Jerez, M. and Rodríguez Díaz, J. A. 1994, p.175)
It seems there is a more positive future for the woman out of gender in the cyberspace, and the Net, even though is still open to discussion (because of the unbreakable boundaries between the off-line Reality, and on-line reality or virtual reality).
So it seems to be a gap, between the medical and science technologies and digital technologies that work on/in the body. But some of these gaps seem to be filling out by the images created by art practices, which work like a factor to denounce, and dismantle the inequality, the gender, and it believes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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[1] The high technologies images in the first step of choosing the changes, and the way to do them, are having, in some cases, such effects, that there is the problem from patients, to differentiate the reality and the virtual representation of the changes made by the machines, and the specialist, in order to know closely the reconstruction after the surgery.
Balsamo, A. (1997). Technologies of the gendered body Reading cyborg woman. 2º Ed. Durham and London. Duke University Press.
[2] http://www.lennartnilsson.com/home.html
[3] http://3dvisa.cch.kcl.ac.uk/project37.html
[4] http://www.viceland.com/es/v3n4/htdocs/a-twitch-in-time-802.php?page=2
[5] http://www.marileneoliver.com/portfolio/portfolio2003/2003nesting1.html
[6] http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/arcx.html
[7] http://www.ekac.org/
[8] http://www.orlan.net/
[9] http://www.ma.uva.es/~antonio/MarinaNunez/MarinaNunez.html
[10]http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/online_az/4:322/result/0/42351?initial=C&artistId=6023&artistName=Helen%20Chadwick&submit=1
