The Body Bytes Back

Abstract

The more the body has been declared obsolete, the more it has started to occupy the center-stage in public and private life. From the docile body (Foucault) via the talking body in Freud’s psychoanalyses to Haraway’s surface body, one can follow its history. With the arrival of the cyborg in the so called post-human epoch the body has been reduced to something which can be shaped, transformed and improved without affecting the subject. The subject has been thrown out of the bath through the uncanny marriage of anti-humanist thinking and a postmodern perception of the human being. But the human being cannot ignore its doubled constitution: as a being of need and of desire at the same time. Three figures - the cyborg, the anorexic and the angel - indicate in different ways the double bind of the human being.