The question of our relationship to the human body tugs at the heart of cyberculture. Plenty of wireheads dream of creating a technological geegaw that will liberate the creative capacity of the mind by separating it from the "tyranny" of the body. This idea is hardly new. It's been around for about as long as Western culture. But our responses to the idea have changed significantly over time.
The Body Emblazoned takes a look back at an age when science changed the West's perspective on the body. Starting in the late 15th century and running to the end of the 17th, author Jonathan Sawday takes a surprising and revealing look at what he calls the "culture of dissection." He writes about a moment in history when religious and philosophical ideas about the purity of the mind versus the impurity of the body collided head-on. This was the period when Western science began to literally dismantle the human body to understand its inner workings. In the process, the image of the dismantled body influenced every aspect of European culture, from science to poetry, from painting to philosophy to the church.
The results of this inquiry were mixed. We gained plenty of empirical knowledge about the body and the structures that make us human, but the process of dissection and fragmentation also exacted a price. It's easy to take things apart but far more difficult to put them back together in useful ways.
At the end of the 20th century, when cyberspace and AIDS have forced us to ask questions about the future of our physical selves, it's both instructive and important to take a look at where we've come from. It may help us to see where we're going.
The Body Emblazoned, by Jonathan Sawday: US$45. Routledge: +1 (212) 244 3336.
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