Feminist Knowledge | Identities, Culture & Religion

Bodies as religion: immortality for beginners
by Amanda du Preez, Senior lecturer, Department of Visual Arts, University of Pretoria  

Listen to your heartbeat. The state of the art of life is ageless vitality.
Primo 3M+, Ageless product

Immortality has traditionally been reserved for the gods and goddesses. In the cases where mere mortals have dared to tamper with their own destiny and infringed on the scared grounds of the gods, they were brutally punished, and poor Prometheus is a good example of this. However, on the threshold of the twentieth-first-century, immortality has apparently come to earth and is becoming a customised choice designed to fit your every whim.

The two concepts coupled in my title, namely bodies and religion; appear at first glance as dichotomies that exclude one another almost "naturally". After all, is it not one of organised religion's (in most of its manifestations) most zealous ambitions to leave the body with all its sinful and tempting possibilities behind and enter into bodiless oblivion? According to most religious interpretations, is it not precisely because of man's (sic) fall into flesh that he supposedly suffers so much? How then can bodies become a religion onto themselves?

That was the old, and may I add, redundant perspective on bodies and religion - in the latest version, bodies and religion are quite compatible. Bodies become a religion that calls for the same dedication and devotion that would make any devout Catholic envious. Bodies are adorned, glorified, modified and dare not to be taken in vain for that is a deadly sin that can not be tolerated in the new idolisation culture of techno-bodies. Feminism(s) should be pleased at this new treatment of bodies, seeing that women and bodies have been negatively associated for centuries. But is this new tyranny of bodies what feminism, in her most generic forms, has been advocating all these years? Is the body beautiful with its severe re-constructions and designs on the female body specifically, what feminisms have fought for? I think not. Feminism(s) have worked towards notions of the "body healthy", "our bodies ourselves" and more life-affirming notions of embodiment, but becoming an ephemeral Kate Moss was not on the cards. In this regard I present the new techno-body, the super body, and most importantly the eternal body, which is now available, but at a consumer price obviously! I would like to introduce the PRIMO 3M+ body (Figure 1), which promises more comfort and better performance than the mere moral body.

The creators of the new Primo 3M+ body is apparently "more powerful, better suspended, more flexible" and it offers extended performance in Italian style. It has an expansive interior and provides 100 quadrillion plus synapse capabilities with a wide range of other optional features. Ageless, the creators of Primo3M+, assures the audience that the "nano-engineered fluid chassis [are] reconfigures under the guidance of networked AI." What more can one ask for?

Furthermore, if one compares the “old twentieth-century-body” to this new PRIMO 3M+ body, the chart of comparison looks something like this:

Table from the Primo 3M+ website
Source: Natasha Vita-More Productions © 1998

The advantages of the new Primo 3M+ body are clear, as well as the shopping mentality towards embodiment underlying its construction. We are informed that one has plenty of options for the new Primo3M+ body such as replacement parts and upgrades, a guaranty for 10,000 years, multiple gender options and naturally, a trade-in on the old body at a discount rate. Is it not irresponsible to discard this offer, especially if one is on the wrong side of fifty and are beginning to seriously experience the permeation of ageing? Some may even start experiencing these signs at a far earlier age. After all, nothing convinces us more of our temporality and mortality than our ageing bodies. According to some views, our bodies are like sentenced time clocks that keep reminding us of that looming something we prefer not to think of, namely death. Or if one is going to ponder death waiting in the wings - it is better to do so with some reward built into the transaction to assist in getting over the difficult parts. If one had the option of buying your way out of mortality, would you?

Let us return again to the image of Primo 3M+ body. The body is presented as a digital advertisement for life extension and utilises an art/science mixture in the designing of an ageless body. The image was designed by Transhumanist [1] and Extropian [2] artist, Natasha Vita More (a pun on "More life"). [3] The viewer is presented with an image of a highly toned muscular blonde female clad in a second skin body suit. The body suit fits her like a condom and accentuates her voluptuous curves magnificently. She is crawling on all fours in anticipation - ready to be jettisoned into the future. The pose that she strikes is not unfamiliar to pornography and high fashion photography. I am particularly thinking of the renowned poster taken in the late seventies of Farrah Fawcett (Figure 2) of Charlie's Angels fame, with her waving blonde curls and million-dollar smile. Fawcett has undoubtedly become on of the legendary icons of the twentieth century and the poster re-produced here has immortalised her as a symbol of beauty and youthfulness. The goddess portrayed in the Primo 3M+ advertisement strikes a very similar pose than the angelic Farrah does.

Upon visiting the website of the Primo 3M+ one can play an animation in which the blonde woman starts to dissolve into motion, while the sound of a racing car's screeching wheels and a seductive female voice announcing: "One the edge" can be heard in the background (Figure 3). The lustrous Primo 3M+ female goddess can precisely be described as a being on the edge anticipating change and ready to evolve into something new. This shining being with her dark glasses, gloved hands and sculpted blonde curls could in some way resemble the birth of a technological Venus (Aphrodite) or Athena of sorts. I will explore some of the possibilities in this regard shortly.

In the background a matrix, grid, and a network of lines, which captures and enclose her can be seen. The environment that shapes and enfolds her like a shell (possible visual reference to the birth of Venus from a shell) is a technological map of griddled networks and crossing lines. She is not born from woman; she is born from technology and father science. She is a cyborg as described in Donna Haraway's “A manifesto for cyborgs: Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s”. Haraway puts forward the cyborg is put forward as the ironic political myth of the post-gendered “cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” (1990:191). The term “cyborg” is a shortened form of “cybernetic organism” and it emerged from the field of cybernetics. [4] A comparison between Haraway's cyborg and the mythical goddess Athena may be useful at his point. Such a comparison seems realistic for neither being is born of woman, but instead both "originate" from the heads of men. Athena sprouts forth from Zeus's head, while the cyborg is incubated in the heads of military men. Haraway insists that her cyborg has no father – at least not one that it is faithful to – but nevertheless; she does admit that cyborgs are the "illegitimate offspring" of militarism, patriarchal capitalism and state socialism. This means that Haraway's cyborg, viewed from another angle, could be Athena reborn in a twentieth-first century technological guise, sprouting from militaristic and capitalistic fathers' heads. After all, the cyborg's illegitimate fathers can be traced back to technological developments for the military, carried out, for instance, by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). [5] For that reason, although unfaithful to its military fathers, the cyborg does not automatically remain outside the reach of either their corrupting influences or the seductions of their capitalist powers. In fact, it may be argued that, in some instances, the cyborg's denounced fathers are even cleverly continued in the construction of the cyborg, although heavily disguised behind a smoke screen of waywardness, discord and disinheritance.

Haraway explains: "The cyborg skips the step of original unity, of identification with nature in the Western sense" (1990:192); and apparently "cyborgs have more to do with regeneration and are suspicious of the reproductive matrix and of most birthing" (1990:223). Haraway's cyborg regenerates and replenishes, but is definitely not born. If there is no birth, but merely regeneration, what happens to death? Does Haraway imply that the cyborg is immortal and that, lizard-like, it replaces failed organs and lost body parts without facing the final penalty for being embodied? The Primo 3M+ cyborg is indeed presented as an immortal creature th at will constantly replicate and upgrade. Her breast will not sag, her hips will not swell and neither will her forehead ever wear a permanent frown. She is sculpted to perfection for all eternity. In all fairness she is a cyborg goddess.

After having briefly compared the Primo 3M+ cybernetic goddess to the goddess Athena, how does she compare to another representation of an immortal being known for her beauty and grace, namely the goddess Venus? If we closely examine the depiction of The Birth of Venus (1485) (Figure 4) by Italian Renaissance artists Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) what notions of immortality are revealed in his rendition and how does it differ from the Primo 3M+ version?

In Boticcelli's depiction of the arrival of Venus, several other creatures accompany her. On the left hand two wing-gods, Hurricane and Zephyr, are blowing her to shore. On the right hand side her stepping on land is awaited by one of the Hours or Nymphs who receives her with a flowered cloak. Much has been said about Boticcelli's elongated limbs and distortions, such as the unnatural length of Aphrodite's neck, the steep fall of her shoulders and the strange way in which her left arm is hinged around her body. All these artistic liberties are working towards creating an infinitely graceful and gentle creature. After all Aphrodite/Venus is no mere mortal but the goddess of Love and Beauty. "Do you not see how mighty is the goddess Aphrodite? She sows and gives that love from which all we upon this earth are born" (Euripides: 497). The painting depicts that glorious moment of Venus's birth from the severed genitals of Uranus, mutilated by his sons. Venus is, therefore, motherless (Aphrodita Uranus) and yet she is simultaneously the mother of everything. Venus's motherless state implies that she has no part in the fallen and mortal physical domain.

Botticelli's Venus is heavily indebted to the theories of Christian Neo-Platonism as interpreted by Marsilio Ficino in Florence at the time. The mythological roots are only one part, although an important part of Boticcelli's rendition of Venus. The Christian version appropriated the goddess as the embodiment of the Soul and Eternal Love. Her physical beauty only hinted at her beautiful soul - were beauty is described in the Neo-Platonic cosmology as "the splendour of divine goodness" (Panofsky 1967:133). In the Neo-Platonic cosmology, Venus was the incarnation of immortal and divine goodness. In other words, what was aspired towards was attaining Venus's graceful spirituality, not her physique necessarily. It was accepted that there is no perfect beauty possible on earth. Immortality was never an option in the physical realm, but could only be acquired in the spiritual after-world. One could simply not become an embodiment of Venus, but could instead praise her in prayers hoping to receive eternal life blessed with beauty and goodness after death. Mortality was still embedded in the physique and immortality was strictly reserved for the disembodied afterlife of the gods and goddesses. It is on this point that the twentieth-first-century interpretation of immortality brusquely differs, from the Neo-Platonic version thereof. As the Primo 3M+ body promises exactly that, which is unattainable in the physical life world, namely immortality in the physique. The blonde techno-blast in the Primo 3M+ version is a physical incarnation of immortality or Venus if you like. She is Venus made flesh by means of extreme technological aid.

If the theme of immortality and mortality is traced further to the seventeenth-century - the Enlightenment, and specifically the Baroque period in art it is revealed that another approach towards mortality becomes evident. It seems as if the seventeenth-century's spirit (understood in the Hegelian sense) realised that the universe is vast and hostile, the body still cumbersome and temporary and man's intellect the nexus from where to decode the secrets of the universe secrets. René Descartes over quoted credo "I think therefore I am" could be described as the motto of the period. Yet, it must be noted that this thinking "I" still relied heavily on the mercy of a graceful God and a existing body.

I want to elaborate here on one of the most dramatic presentations of man's ventures into the material world, in an attempt to understand the thinking "I" better. Rembrandt Hamerzoon Van Rijn's (1606-1669) painting of The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp (1632) (Figure 5) depicts the awe-inspiring probing into the human anatomy in a dramatic chiaroscuro setting. Eight figures emanate from a darker background that constantly threatens to pull them back into the ominous vastness of an unknown universe.

Figure 5, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp, 1632, Rembrandt van Rijn
Mauritshuis Royal Picture Gallery, The Hague

The central figure in the painting is obviously the deceased man, a criminal, probably the twenty-eight year old Adriaan Adriaanz, going by the nickname "Het Kint" [6] (Querido 1967:129). He was executed for wantonness in 1632 and had the undeniable honour of becoming one of a budding science's subjects shortly thereafter. The master of the ceremony is the thirty-nine-year old Dr.Nicolaas Tulp, physician from Amsterdam and lecture in anatomy. Tulp was a man of stature and the fact that he is the only one painted with a hat demonstrates his elevated position. [7] In fact only two years after this painting was painted, Tulp was appointed mayor of Amsterdam .

What is relevant for my discussion here is how the theme of mortality is treated in Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson . The drama of mortality and immortality is uniquely embodied in the hand gestures displayed by Dr Nicolaas Tulp and the figure at the back, Frans van Loenen – the only other figure looking back at the viewer. The subject matter of Tulp's anatomy lesson is the workings of the muscles of the forearm. With his right hand he is demonstrating the secrets of muscles and tendons, his mouth slightly open while lecturing. All the figures in the painting are paying careful attention to Tulp's lecture, except for the figure at the back. Instead, Van Loenen is looking directly at the viewer while his finger points down at the dead body on the slab. It is interesting to note that except for Tulp's hands, the hand of Van Loenen is the only other obviously visible one.

While Tulp is demonstrating how anatomy opens the possibility to gain knowledge and insight into God's mysterious ways, Van Loenen is reminding us of our inevitable fate. The metaphysical tradition that Dr.Tulp was working in, believed that knowledge of mankind leads to knowledge of God. In other words cognitio sui leads inevitably to cognitio Dei . Knowledge of the mysteries below, immediately open up the privileged knowledge of the universe. Tulp's right hand is optimistically upward turned, while he is unveiling the mysteries of cognitio sui . At the same time as the secrets of mortality is revealed, the secrets of immortality ( cognitio Dei) is also unravelled. Tulp's frame of reference holds that if we delve deep enough in the material world, God will appear in the cells and atoms. At that exact moment when God discloses himself through the inert flesh, it is also the exact moment when bodies become sacred in themselves, as the immortal has appeared through the mortal. In Nicolaas Tulp's anatomy lesson bodies become a religion.

Van Loenen on the other hand with his downward pointing hand, shows a more sceptic perspective on the dissected cadaver as explained: “Hence Van Loenen demonstrates the pessimistic lesson of anatomy, the lesson that man is mortal, while Tulp demonstrates the optimistic lesson, teaching that man is divine and therefore immortal" (Schupbach 1982:44). In other words, in Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson man is represented as simultaneously a mortal and immortal being. Modern science has made it possible for mankind to start tampering with the universe and inevitably with his own mortality.

The body displayed on the Primo 3M+ website is the ultimate accomplishment of where Tulp's anatomy lesson was heading for. It appears as if humanity has finally delved deep enough into the atoms and DNA structures to reveal the secrets of immortality. God has surfaced in the sciences. The secret codes of immortality have apparently been disclosed. Immortality is no longer reserved for the gods and goddesses, as longevity is becoming a customised designer option. Bodies that were once contested sites – the temple of God , have now morphed into the temples of religious consumerism. Venus is coming to a shopping mall near you!

I want to end this short deliberation on mortality and immortality, by stating that the cult of the body beautiful and the designer techno-body is paradoxically the continuation of older Gnostic and Judeo-Christian body-scepticisms. Although the body appears to be the exalted subject of these endeavours, she is still the object or vehicle of its abstractions. In other words, she is still that which needs to be discarded and transcended in order to achieve immortality. In this attempt to achieve immortality the mortal body is restructured, reconfigured, augmented, enhanced, designed and disciplined to fit the needs of a mind that thinks itself immortal. Ironically, the exact moment when the body is abstracted into a religion is also sadly the exact moment that heralds her disappearance into bodiless oblivion.

Bibliography:

Haraway, D. 1990. A manifesto for cyborgs. Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s, in Feminism/Postmodernism , edited by LJ Nicholson. New York & London : Routledge: 191-130.

Panofsky, E. 1967. Studies in iconology. Humanistic themes in the art of the Renaissance . New York : Harper & Row Publishers.

Primo 3M+ a product of Ageless . [O] Available: http://www.extropic-art.com/aesthetics2.htm

Querido, A. 1967. 'De Anatomie van de anatomische les'. Oud Holland LXXXII(3):128-36.

Schupbach, W. 1982. The paradox of Rembrandt's 'Anatomy lesson of Dr. Tulp' . London : Welcome Institute for the History of Medicine.

Endnotes:

[1] "Transhumanism is the evolution from being exclusively biological to adding technology to enhance and improve our lives in positive ways and to encourage the spirit of creativity. Transhumans are creating a cultural imprint on society - stirring up dust in our tracks! " Alias Natasha Vita More.

[2] Extropian philosophy is described by Max More, the president of the Extropy Institute, as an inspiring and uplifting movement, firmly founded in science, reason and the boundless search for improvement. See his The Extropian Principples 2.5 at: http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Cultural/Philosophy/princip.html#it2

[3] Natasha Vita More describes herself as a Transhumanist and Extropian artist. She summarises her projects as following: "The flesh-body is becoming a bio-tech body. The architecture of our image will take on novelty. While I enjoy sculpting my outer flesh, I look forward to bio-tech designs that will enhance physical abilities and augment intelligence and creativity. Flexmy mind-Flex my body." For more information on the artist and her viewpoints see: http://www.natasha.cc

[4] Norbert Wiener first defined the field of cybernetics in Cybernetics: or control and communication in the animal and the machine (1948). Basically cybernetics entails the study of the control and regulatory properties of complex systems as it pertains to both machines and living systems or organisms. According to Katherine Hayles, cybernetics was born from the joining of nineteenth-century control theory and the nascent theory of information in the 1930s and 1940s (1999:8). The following three fields form the main focus of cybernetics: information, control and communication.

[5] See “A Brief History of the Internet and Related Networks “ by Vint Cerf (2001) for more detail on the history and government involvement in the early developmental years of the Internet.
Available at: http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/cerf.shtml

[6] The nickname “Het Kint”suggests that the poor Adriaan Adriaanz was mentally impaired. The fact that he was executed for wantonness should also be seen in the context of his impairedness. Executing someone for wantonness seems a bit harsh for our modern "rational" sensibilities and add to that the man's mental handicapped position, his sentence do seem undeserved indeed.

[7] X-ray studies of the painting shows differently though, for apparently Frans van Loenen was also at first depicted with a hat. This would obviously mean that he would be placed on the same level of expertise as the acclaimed Dr. Tulp. That was an unbearable position for Dr. Tulp and Rembarndt had to change his dramatic interpretation to accommodate real positions and statuses.