Oxymoronic Dismemberment

An exploration of the body’s assembled fragmentation

“The difference between organic and inorganic, living and dead matter is worryingly unclear.”
Tom Lubbock 'Strong Meat' The Independent, September 1992

“Tradition as a living force produces in its unfolding another problem. What had originally been believed to be consistent, unified and self-enclosed now becomes diversified, multifold and full of contradictions.”
Gershom Scholem 'Revelation and tradition as religious categories in Judaism' The Messainic Idea in Judaism and other essays in Jewish Spirituality, New York, Schocker (1971)

The basic premise of this exploration into the seemingly multiplicit use of the body as a readymade for artists, is to try to investigate the various ways in which its fragmentation (and sometimes subsequent assembly) of material ‘corpus’ has been exploited, and to perhaps also uncover the reasons as to why this fragmentation appears to be such a constant source of artistic stimulus. It is indisputable that, in the late Twentieth Century, the body has become a battlefield, a widely discussed building site, able to be shaped to any specification desired, yet I feel as if I should firstly begin by setting some parameters within which to structure my discussion.

What does the term ‘fragmentation’ of the body actually mean? It is perhaps a smaller part of the greater whole, broken off in some way, a seemingly unfinished remainder of an otherwise lost or destroyed object of physicality, yet in the terms and context of the human body, this is generally taken to mean a rogue limb or part which is somehow severed from the rest. I therefore intend to explore three primary issues springing from this definition. The use of three ‘bodies’, the body artificial, the body real, and the body prosthetic can be seen within the framework of a bodily ‘spectrum’, the first two operating at two opposite and polarized ends, and the third existing in a fluid ‘middle ground’ between them. Through exploring these themes, and their subsequent relation to two other formidable bodies, the ‘social’ and the ‘political’, I hope to uncover some notion of what it is that we now believe ‘the body’ to be.

Historically, there are two primary figures particularly well known for their ‘use’ of the dismembered and assembled body, namely Theodore Gericault and Hans Bellmer. Obviously working within separate times and contexts, these artists made it possible to portray the seemingly gruesome and nightmarish as sometimes perversely ‘beautiful’, and certainly worthy of interest. Yet in saying this, they were, of course, not the first to depict such subject matter. One need only think of the severity of religious iconography, and that Christian church’s obsession with the body and blood of Christ to see that it is not new to art history.

Firstly, I intend tot briefly refer to Gericault’s cadaver studies, produced in preparation for his 1819 work ‘The Raft of The Medusa’. The subject matter of cannibalism and man driven to insanity through extreme circumstance is depicted through the study of morgue sweepings and the debris from the guillotine. This is perhaps a subject which is never going to be easy in terms of the fact that it is the ‘living’ who are looking at the work. Our historical refusal to accept death as an integral part of life is problematic, we never like to be reminded of our own mortality.

“In the fall from grace, something still lands, hard.”
Bruce Ferguson: 'The Sculpture of Charles Ray' Rooseum, Centre for Contemporary Art, Malmo (1994)

Theodore Gericault
The Raft of The Medusa (1819)

In these images of fragmented heads and limbs, separated from the rest of their now inanimate bodies, the viewer in being confronted with Gericault’s ‘color’ of death, is left to debate over specifics concerning the individual in question. Why were they dismembered, and did their punishment really fit their crime? There are also the deeper rooted issues over assumptions held over mortality itself, such as when the body no longer exists as ‘living’, what happens to what we religiously term ‘the soul’?

Theodore Gericault
Study of Two Severed Heads’ (1819) Oil on canvas

Even supposedly at rest or ‘at peace’ with God, the images still remain those of nightmarish torment. Conversely, Bellmer’s assemblages of his ‘Poupee’ (1935) seem to suggest speculation over how the contortion of the ‘living’ material can lead to a sexual and perverse dream-like existence.

“As in a dream, the body can change the centre of gravity of its images. Inspired by a curious spirit of contradiction, it can add to one what it has taken from another. For instance, it can place the leg on top of the arm, the vulva in the armpit, in order to make ‘compressions’, ‘proofs of analogies’, ‘ambiguities’, ‘puns’, strange anatomical probability calculations.”
Hans Bellmer: Quoted by Peter Webb and Robert Short in 'Hans Bellmer' Quartet Books (1985)

His dismembered dolls are truly the stuff of nightmare (his obsession with the subconscious obsessed Surrealist group obviously apparent here). Dolls, traditionally accepted to be objects of child’s play, are transformed by Bellmer, through a strong sexual vocabulary into metaphors for the wider psycho-sexual debates supposedly contained within the human psyche. The fundamental difference which I wish to point out here is that each of the two artists individually portray the first two notions of the fragmented body which I wish to discuss, the real versus the artificial.

I will begin by looking at the body ‘artificial’ in the context of one of the most common examples of Twentieth Century consumerist icons, the assembled, hybrid-like form of the fiberglass mannequin.

Chapter One: Cast Anorexic Perfection

“The least development, and but little success, attends the male mannequin in his doubtful progress from cloying narcissism to pseudo-roguery. It may be assumed that the male appeal is not visual, and that integrity and a substantial bank balance fail to be expressed in terms of modeling and a spray of paint. More recent is the cult of the ‘Teenage’ figure for a new and very richly rewarding market. These highly styled young women have been elevated from the never-never land of ‘Junior Miss’ to close the gap between them and the adult figures. Through the escapades in wire and cane... has emerged the torso with many attachments. More disturbing are the decapitated torsos, busts and shoulders with grossly attenuated necks, streamlined to absurdity and obscuring all detail of garment cutting and proportion.”
Eric Lucking: 'Mannequins' in the 'International Survey of the Art of Window Display' Vol. 2, Graphis Press (1961)

Perhaps the most socially common of all forms of the artificially fragmented (and subsequently often assembled) body is that of the mannequin.The traditionally female fiberglass form has now come to represent, in the late twentieth century, the personification of advertising and marketing ploys through which the notion of the idealization and rapid improvement of the 'self-ego' is played upon. They therefore are objects of aspiration, one of the fundamental rudiments of advertising. The subject and object of all marketing is obviously humanist related, thus, through displaying products draped over these somewhat pale and anorexic hybrids, the consumer's aspirational self-identity is replaced and substituted through a 'caricature' of their own identity. Perhaps it could be argued that the same notion can be applied to the fashion industry's 'supermodels'.

The point which I am trying to make here is that the consumer's self-identity is reduced to demographic qualities, the use of hybrid-esque human simulacrum being used to substitute the actual self in favor of the 'ideal' self, or ego ideal. It is therefore debatable as to the probability of the consumer really being the focus and emphasis of this appeal. I feel that what is being advertised and pandered to is some form of idealized state, of which the mannequins are a part, and this Utopian landscape supposedly exists in the deep rooted depths of our aspirational selves. Of course, there can never be any kind of life in the mannequin, yet through their awkward posturing and juxtaposing (to place them in a perverse social realm) with others, we are meant to believe that there is life within them. It is a subversion of the human image that attempts to fulfill our psychological inadequacies.

“The self recognizes itself as the subject of direct mail advertising a subject by virtue of being the object of value, demographic application; occupation, zip code, marital status, car or house owner.”
Bruce Ferguson: 'The Sculpture of Charles Ray' Rooseum, Centre for Contemporary Art, Malmo (1994)

With these demographic issues in mind, one such artist keen to re-present the perverse assemblage of the mannequin's body is the American sculptor Charles Ray. Having had a somewhat formalist training, he is perhaps best known for his integral use of the body within the work. Yet it is in more recent works that Ray's image has been either duplicated or transposed in numbers into the mannequin form. Works such as ‘Family Romance’ (1993) and ‘Self Portrait’ (1990) demonstrate his questioning of social norms through the vocabulary of ‘consumerist’ society. The use of the mannequins tends to always parody real life, the simulacrum often being indistinguishable from the real thing except for its deadpan expression. His use of the notion of everyday 'man' relates well to the use of the mannequin, a traditionally female object. Ray's work would appear to be often concerned with the setting up of dualities, playing one aspect of society off against another, yet perhaps with these mannequin works, the primary theme is the questioning of collective assumptions over the body as physical and the figure as constructed matter.

One such example where this duality is present is in his work entitled ‘Male Mannequin’ (1990), whereby a cast of the artist's genitals, complete with pubic hair, has been transplanted onto the generic male mannequin (in a sort of reverse Bobbitt act). The body and figure duality is obviously apparent here as there is the cast versus the stylized, with the entire focus of the work resting on the cast of the genitals. Traditionally sexless (reflecting the 'toning down' of any impropriety in art history), Ray returns the sexuality to the dummy which has been neutered, ironically making the focus the sexuality, not the entire figure, as is normally the case. Aside from issues of concealment and repression, it is interesting to note that in performing this transplant. Ray no longer makes the audience neutral spectators as they would be with a shop window display. In returning the 'power' back to this figure, he is questioning the agenda through which we know 'masculinity' itself.

Another interesting play on the body/figure duality is the comparison between the real and the stylized hair. There seems to be a reversal of tactility implied in how the two types of hair have been rendered. The pubic (now public) hair now appears soft in comparison with the hard hat appearance of the head hair. This stylization of hair, a part of the body which is constantly growing, into something lifeless and hard (and obviously easier for the manufacturers to cast), is not new to art history. One is reminded of the stylized hair of the Classical period (which will be discussed further in chapter two), Canova's 'Theseus and the Minotaur’ of 1782 being a fine example of this highly cropped, helmet-like rendering. Yet, generally, within the boundaries of Classicism, the 'life' of the figure(assuming that inert rock is imbued with Pygmalionesque qualities), is transposed as ‘real’ through the definition of the muscles and dynamic posing, but within the lowbrow mannequin form, due to its complete hybridian overhaul, any sense of life would seem purely coincidental, and it is this point which Ray plays on when transplanting his casts to the generic form.

Charles Ray
Oh! Charley, Charley, Charley (1992)

The theme of sexuality within the mannequin is further played upon in Ray's 1992 work entitled ‘Oh! Charley, Charley, Charley’, in which eight mannequinesque cast simulacra of the artist indulge in a group sex orgy. The rather obvious connotations of narcissism and the insult ‘Go fuck yourself’ are dwelt on and toyed with here, yet I feel that there is far more of a sense of pathos, an indefinite loss of identity (an attribute well linked to consumerist society), through the use of an almost dehumanized sexuality. Ray says of the period before the fabrication of the work:

“I was getting divorced from my wife. I was involved with different girlfriends and partners you know. You realize at a certain point that you just... you just like sleeping with yourself.”
Charles Ray: In conversation with Francesco Bonami in 'A Telephone Conversation' Flash Art, Summer 1992

Through the context of this statement, the piece becomes less about homoeroticism (as is first thought), but through the deadening use of the mannequins, Ray transposes the subject matter of his sculpture, the sexually explicit, into quite the opposite, perhaps through the very simple device of literally interpreting an insult into real terms.

This 'deadening' of a somewhat strong sexual content is obviously deeply rooted in the practice of Hans Bellmer, yet still of particular relevance to contemporary artists. The brothers Chapman (Jake and Dinos) in their recent work ‘Fuck Face’ (1993), take a similar aesthetic line of investigation to Ray's orgy work. They too, take an insult, and literally transpose it into real terms. In this particular work, a child mannequin, wearing a T-shirt bearing an ambiguous statement of intent from the artists, has had his facial features morphed into the basic homoerotic objects of desire, the penis for a nose and an orifice (a rectum) for a mouth. Obviously it courts the somewhat simplistic and literal interpretation, yet to do this would be to only scratch the piece's conceptual surface.

“Give me an issue, I’ll give you a tissue, you can wipe my ass with it.”
Lou Reed: 'Take No Prisoners' Arista Records, 1978

Much of the Chapmans' work espouses pleasure and excitement, a typical aspirational quality induced by advertisers, yet in 'Fuck Face', what is suggested (as well as being reminiscent of Mapplethorpe's child portraiture) is that, a degrading insult, projected onto the synthetic likeness of a child through literal terms, makes public the debates of sexual desire and its concealment (not usually the stuff of window display) in much the same way that Ray's ‘Male Mannequin’ also does.

The mannequin, as I have already discussed, is the object of aspiration, and therefore, when applied to the image of a child, the subject of this consumerist aspiration literally becomes the public expression of a forward looking, futuristic notion of perverse sexuality. In equating the nose with the penis and the mouth with the rectum (supposedly because they are all points at which abject matter is expelled from the body, perhaps keeping the child 'physically cleaner' yet ironically 'conceptually dirtier'?), the brothers Chapman provide a platform for the debates of sexual maturity versus social aspiration to be discussed.

Jake and Dinos Chapman
Zygotic Acceleration, Biogenetic, De-Sublimated Libidinal Model (1995)
Fiberglass 150 x 180 x 140 cm, Saatchi Gallery

Oxymoronically, the mannequin therefore demonstrates how our mass and public subconscious is catered for by marketing, in order to feed our psychological appetites. In replacing the human form with a fiberglass, stylized substitute, the 'audience' (having already lost its identity through demographic categorization), from the behind the safety of the shop window, is then able to use them as a focus for the projection of their own, pandered to ego-ideal. It is this specifically nightmarish drift in perception whereby we think we identify ourselves (our aspirational selves) with these anorexic and pale hybrids which leads me to assume how socially powerful the artificial assembled body can really be.

Chapter Two: The Removal From ‘Normality’

“I need physical marvels - a person, thing or act so extraordinary as to inspire wonder : someone with wings, horns, tails, fins, claws. Anyone without a face. Anyone with additional arms, breasts, genitals, lips. A woman with one breast ... women whose faces are covered in hair and are ready to pose in evening gowns ... anorexics (preferably bald), the romantic and criminally insane (nude only). All manner of extreme visual perversions.”
Joel-Peter Witkin: Request for models issued by the artist, 1989. Quoted by Tom Lubbock in 'Strong Meat', The Independent, September 1992

In secondly discussing the rather broader notion of 'the real' in relation to the artistic use of bodily fragments (thus work which is following in the tradition of Gericault's mortuary studies), I feel as though I am touching upon a particularly taboo area of debate. By using the generic term of the real', I am attempting to explore the use of morgue 'sweepings', cadavers, and their subsequent assemblage into 'unnatural' physical images. Yet one such area of seemingly 'natural' assemblage of seemingly disparate elements, or even 'living fragments' is that of the so-called ‘Freak’ or 'Medical Curiosity'. The term 'freak' I find problematic as it seems to denote some form of lower species, yet I will continue to use it purely because it is so widely understood.

Dubiously excluded from recent debate concerning political correctness, and its recognition of supposedly 'minority' groups, the rather difficult notion of the deformed or disabled is so withdrawn from that of 'normality' as the everyday understands it, that to be harshly exposed to the actual physical realities (the 'distortions of the flesh') is almost to perceive the unreal or fantastical. Our fear of the unnatural 'other' leads to somewhat extreme prejudices, the stereotypical term 'the freak' being our only word to describe such ‘abnormalities’.

One such artwork which exposed these ‘abnormalities’ to a wide audience (before it was censored on moral grounds for over thirty years), was Browning's 1932 film ‘The Freaks’, which, due to the time and context of its making, is frighteningly believable, the impossibility of trick photography enforcing our belief in what we actually see. There is a perverse sense of duality in that we seem to believe the photographic image, but not the subject matter, purely because of its unacceptable ‘otherness’.

The narrative, based on Tod Robbins' story 'Spurs', revolves around a small, closely-knit band of circus sideshow freaks, whose strict moral 'code' is challenged by a new member to the group, who surprisingly is young and very beautiful (yet malicious and ruthless). Perhaps her beauty is just as much of a challenge to them as her attitude of spite and resentment.

“Images of castration, mutilation, dismemberment, dislocation, evisceration, devouring, bursting open of the body.”
Jacques Lacan: 'Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis' W.W. Norton and Co., New York / London (1977)

The freaks' response to this challenge (which comes in the form of mocking, blackmail and adultery) is to enforce their 'code' upon her, taking their revenge by mysteriously turning her into the 'birdwoman', thus making her one of them. What this film attempts, is an ironic reversal of the stereotypes surrounding the social norms of the 'grotesque1. It is the freaks who are excluding the 'normal* (yet another stereotype) from their society, rather than the other way around (as is usually the case). Our attempts to integrate the ‘abnormal’ into our society are also mirrored in the film through the girl's transposition into the ‘birdwoman’. The primary thought is that the freaks, having been ostracized from the mass, are not really any different from us at all, indeed, it is the 'normal' who are the perpetrator. This is because of the historical rejection of anything considered to be ‘other’ often seen as being linked to the Devil.

Joel-Peter Witkin
The Studio of the Painter Courbet (1990)

In relation to this, it is also perhaps worthy of note that the use of disparate body parts is virtually inseparable from the idea of death, obviously as to be in bits denotes being dead (this idea already having undermined through the existence of the freak). It is the specific polarization of the terms 'life' and 'death', which seems to make the use of body parts problematic. It is virtually impossible for the living to conceive of death as they are seen as contradictory terms.

One artist frequently associated with this use of dead ‘corpus’ is the photographer Joel-Peter Witkin. Also concerned with the photographic depictions of the so-called sideshow freaks (Diane Arbus being a strong influence here), Witkin is keen to use the existing vocabulary of art history, with a particular preference for remaking Victorian tableaux and Dutch ‘vanitas’, in order to create his own 'alternate reality'. Even though his images are reminiscent of images from the seventeenth century, this is still ironically relevant to the separate or 'virtual' realities now being established through the accelerated development of interactive technology.

The most problematic aspect of Witkin's work is perhaps the notion of how the artist can justify themselves in handling such subject matter. This justification also seems rather out of place in a contemporary context, the specific handling of the dead only perhaps being justified through history (Gericault’s mortuary studies obviously testament to this). Yet I feel that the use of such subject matter is problematic due to two main reasons. Firstly it can easily be seen as exploitative (as the subjects have no voice), leading to frequent accusations of sensationalism. and secondly, because in touching upon the somewhat highly emotive subject of the abnormal, the images force the viewer to be far more aware of their own 'corpus', making them uncomfortable at their own 'normality'.

‘Feast of Fools’ (1990), strongly follows in the tradition of Dutch vanitas, and pushes these notions of 'acceptability' to their extremities. In this photograph (aged and therefore somewhat justified through Witkin's technique of hand 'weathering' his prints during the exposure), human remains of severed limbs, lie amongst ripened bunches of fruit, obviously reminiscent of vanitas' signifiers of mortality, yet in amongst this debris, in a perverse ‘king of the castle’ gesture lies the corpse of a baby, his eyes somewhat religiously masked by what appears to be a crown. This image is perhaps one which strikes at the very heart of the human psyche. The dead baby signifies perhaps one of the most appalling notions possible, death without even having truly experienced life, yet to add to this horror in displaying it amongst this 'still life' (still born?) setting is almost too horrific to even think of.

Coincidentally, the image also follows in a seemingly very perverse nineteenth century tradition of photography, whereby, if the mother’s baby was still born, she would often have her picture taken with the small corpse as some form of momenta mori. Diane Arbus' ‘Woman with her baby monkey, NJ’ (1971) is also strongly referential to this tradition. The images are perhaps more horrific than Witkin's due to their extreme subtlety (the corpses just look asleep), and it is only through a certain knowledge of this tradition that one can understand it as a momento mori, whereas with Witkin's work, very rarely is anything implied (perhaps ironically, only life), thus causing the aforementioned attacks of sensationalism.

Diane Arbus
Woman with her Baby Monkey, New Jersey (1971)

Therefore, the somewhat gruesome use of 'the real' assemblage of body parts, either 'naturally' through somewhat abnormal birth (as in the problematic case of the freak), or through disparate construction (with Witkin and Frankenstein) is far more difficult to interact with than the use of the artificial. Its photographic mediation adds to our sense of what we see as convincingly believable. Would a real mediation through the actual sculptural display be any more horrific? As this is purely speculation it is difficult to say but I feel sure that it would be so problematic as to cause great protest, although Damien Hirst is approaching this stage in his work already. He has often publicly discussed his desire to use human remains for his formaldehyde filled vitrines, and of course, he has already used animals in much the same way. The crossover into the use of dead humans is not that distant aesthetically and formally but morally incredibly unacceptable.

The use of dead human remains touches upon our deep psychological fears concerning the fragility of the flesh and its ease of distortion, but also it almost goes to undermine the very fundamental theological notion of 'the soul', whereby the body, now fragmented and devoid of life and spirituality, is exposed as being little more than rotting matter. reductively equal to the foodstuffs so prevalent in Witkin's vanitas-esque constructions.

Chapter Three: Living Tissue Over Metal Endoskeleton

“The Freudian model of the ‘psychological person’ is dissolving into a new model that encourages individuals to dispense with the anguished analysis of how subconscious childhood experiences moulded their behavior. There is a new sense that one can simply construct the new self that one wants, freed from the constraints of one’s past and one’s inherited genetic code.”
Jeffrey Deitch: 'PostHuman' Exhibition catalogue essay (1992)

Floating somewhere in the 'middle ground' between 'the real' and 'the artificial' use of body fragments, is the body prosthetic. Now, in the late twentieth century, prosthetics have evolved to such an accelerated extent that virtually any part of the human body (with the obvious exception of the brain) can either be replaced or 'improved' according to one's own subjective specification. This gradual replacement of the self with such inorganic materials as titanium and silicone leads me to believe that there are primarily two main strands of use for the prosthetic, namely the necessary, surgical use (in the cases of actual replacement due to an accident or surgical scarring etc.) and also the rather problematic and somewhat unnecessarily narcissistic applications, whereby the self is actually remodeled through so-called ‘plastic’ surgery.

In opposition to this narcissism, most of the medical applications of prostheses are indeed invisible, designed to replace internal organs and the fundamental structuring of the body. Bones are able to be replaced through the use of titanium screws and plates, whereas the softer tissue can easily be substituted by silicone implants. The basic use of ‘the medical’ is that of replacement. Body parts injured and damaged through accident and disease can be replaced to a standard which often even supersedes the original kind of 'Six Million Dollar Man' gesture.

The other, more subjective use of prostheses is that of self-improvement, a rebuilding and restructuring of the self's outer shell, perhaps in order to combat psychological anxieties over outward appearance. It is unfortunate that in an age saturated by the media and its subsequent obsession with the self image (the consumerist hybrid of this being aspired to with the mannequin) that the idea of personal self identity is somewhat completely controlled by 'others'. The desire to improve oneself is no longer restricted to the traditional notions of gaining knowledge and working hard, it is actually aesthetic.

Ironically, it is very rarely the one operation which serves to satisfy the self's appetite for aesthetic improvement. It is well documented that ‘plastic’ surgery (ironically called this for obvious monetary reasons also) is extremely addictive, the patient often returning to the same clinic every year to renew or patch up the aging work originally executed. This is therefore, somewhat disintegrating the idea of the 'pure’ human, whereby, through the justification of narcissism, the body is slowly eroded through age and then replaced through 'alien' matter due to a specific ‘choice’.

“We have this split where we say the intellect is more Important than the physical. And we have this hatred of the physical.”
Kiki Smith: Quoted by Karsten Brooke Schleifer in 'Inside and Out - An interview with Kiki Smith' The Print Collector's Newsletter, 22 July / August 1991

In terms of artistic response to the issue of prostheses, there are perhaps two main protagonists in this field, Marc Quinn and Cindy Sherman. In Quinn's 1992 screen print ‘Template for my future surgery’ there is a photograph of Quinn himself, and overlaid onto the image are the various parts of himself which he has chosen to replace. These include an ear, nose, tongue and hand. This is the narcissistic aspect of prostheses at a very perverse extreme. To actually plan your rebuilding seems utterly bizarre, yet in reference to what I have already said about the patient returning to the same clinic time and time again, this does seem frighteningly true, and a very real observation. Conversely, Cindy Sherman takes her starting point as the idea of the replacement of the self, and transposes herself into different characters (from films, art history, nightmares etc.) by using particularly apparent make-up and prosthetic attachments (I feel this is because her work is very widely known and therefore the viewer is acutely aware that she is 'dressing up'). The notion of the replacement of the self through the vocabulary of the media is an obvious reflection on the idea of others shaping the self identity, but Sherman's characters are often the stuff of nightmare, very sinister in a kind of fairy tale manner.

Marc Quinn
Template for My Future Surgery (1992)

The substitution of the self with inorganically fabricated matter reaches its hypothetical peak of development in the case of the cyborg. Predominantly machine and only part human, it comes to represent a vision of, at the pace of current medical and technological advances, what supposedly may become some perverse form of ‘artificial evolution’. Cyborgs, for the greater part of history, have been purely the stuff of science fiction, yet In this particular era of future shock, where the technology of the future seems to be catching up with us so fast that we are unable to cope with it, the reality seems only years, instead of centuries away.

“An, as yet, imaginary fusion of humnan and machine; a computer controlled robot that replicates human behavior. Thinking (and sometimes form) perfectly but is much more, adding to its human attributes the power and indestructibility of the machine.”
Simon Ryder: Definition of a cyborg in 'The Framing of Faustus - A personal look at the nature of photography and its affect on individual memory' (Unpublished, 1994)

When discussing the self's gradual replacement with metals and its evolution into the father of the cyborg, one is reminded of several famous cinematic examples of this. In Ridley Scott's ‘Alien’ (1979), Ash, the on-board cyborg member of the crew, is firstly shown to be completely infallible, yet as the events concerning the alien's presence onboard the ‘Nostromo’ unfold. Ash is shown to malfunction, actually turning against the humans (those who made him, back again to Frankenstein) to endanger those around him in much the same way as Stanley Kubrick's HAL2000 does in '2001 - A Space Odyssey (1968). Similarly with James Cameron's ‘The Terminator’ (1984), the cyborg, sent back through time to kill the mother of an unborn futuristic leader, is shown to lack any form of human emotion, merely mimicking human activity. It is perhaps this proliferation through the cinema which leads us to fear the era of the cyborg. Indeed, the stereotype of the superhuman prosthetic being (supposedly infallible and always in control), which malfunctions is indeed frightening when it seems that we are not actually (technologically) that far from it.

Therefore, in conclusion, with respect to the notion of the late twentieth century's fragmentation of the body primarily being split into the artificial, the real and the prosthetic, what can we surmise the 'body' to be? The question, of course, is subjectively impossible to answer, however. I can suggest that this very problematic notion of the specific fragmentation of the body is one which leads us to the assumption (due to generally what we eat and how we live) that it is very unlikely that we even really know what we are. The 'real' demonstrates that, with the removal of the theological 'soul', which seems to bind the body together, we are little more than aging organic matter, just in a state of more advanced evolution than anything else on the planet. Whereas the 'artificial' merely shows how we tend to corrupt our own aspirational selves through hybridian assemblage. It is also this assemblage through prosthetic replacement, which leads me to conclude that the idea of the ‘body’ is a complex and problematic assemblage of corrupted organic matter, lying somewhere on the road to Cyberville, and pumped so full of the inorganic that in an effort to ‘progress’ the human species, we are actually being replaced through substitute parts (which of course don't age like we do).

The era of the body snatchers is almost upon us, and there is very little that we can do about it.

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