The matter of avant or what precedes is crucial to
scientific and philosophic inquiry and is attributed
to the letter A in this alphabet. In the epigraph
above, Charles Bernstein revised Henny Youngman’s
joke to highlight the paradigm of theory and
practice. The mind/body dichotomy is implicit in
the theory/practice question as well as in postmodern theories of embodiment. This
book proposes that theory usually follows practice,
and argues for embodied experience (practice) as
the motivating source informing new
cultural theory and critique. Theories about embodiment developed
from the
discourse about avant garde culture that used artistic and
technologic experiments. Embodiment is also the central locus
of
genetic research, and it is central to the proverbial nature/nurture
question. Post-structuralism challenges ideas of
embodiment in the idea of absence and the
disappearing self, exemplified by Jean Baudrillard
and Jacques Derrida, while Posthumanism, described by
Katherine Hayles and Cyborg Feminism
(Donna Haraway) reconfigure the embodied self.
Although deconstruction theory declared, the
humanist subject dead, along with his empirical
ethnocentric, and phallocentric inquiry into the
origin of matter and history, theory itself
continued to search for a cause of desire and
inquiry. Although embodied theories may seem to have risen
from the nostalgic hubris of the autopsy table of
humanism’s dismembered corpse, discourse on
embodiment originated in several late-modern
cultural movements that sought to revivify the idea
of an embodied human.
The
physicality of rock and roll music, beat poetry,
sound poetry, concrete poetry, the back to nature movement and
physical fitness fads were cultural practices of the
1960’s and 1970’s that fostered a heightened
dialectic of body consciousness. Feminist/Queer
theory and politics also privileged the concept of
the body, and the subjective self, differentiated by biologic
function and body state. Artistic expressions of
this period, by such writers as Nicole Brossard,
Alan Ginsberg, Jerome Rothenberg, Leslie Scalopino,
and Luce Irigaray, explored and argued for embodied
consciousness. Photographers, Don Carson’s
photographs of nudes in outdoor settings (1990s) are
a characteristic example from visual art. Another
rendition is, Skin Deep (1976), a mixed-media
performance art program with ultra-close-up
photographs of nudes, poetry and music.
Within and from the cultural and artistic practices
of this era, theories of embodiment became
formalized in the critique about these works that
emphasized the body and human physicality. In the
same period, new media and technology such as the
video camera, tape recorder, plastic wrap, and the
computer processor begin an information revolution
that lead to the postmodern condition, the
transition from analog to digital, from human to
cyborg-enhanced human. The embodied structure of
organic, conceptual and mechanical forms became
recognized in the simultaneous sense of breakdown
and evolution.
Theories of embodiment intersect with several
disciplines. Of interest to this work are new
bibliographic studies of language, book design and
digital media, which examine the physical aspects of
text matter, and other theories about embodied
consciousness, in semiosis, cognitive research,
metaphor logic, and philosophy. Charles Peirce, the
founder of philosophic Pragmatism studied semiosis
to understand the mechanisms of thought. He searched
for a linguistic code to explain the logic of
meaning, and the paradox of understanding within the
context of representational multiplicity. Finding traditional
written discourse inadequate, he composed a system
of graphical notations, called existential graphs
to describe his theory of embodied consciousness with an
iconographic or visual language. This
pictographic technique is it’s own alphabet to
describe a new theory. Peirce's philosophic inquiry
emphasized the mechanism of thought including language as a
biologic processes rather than the products of thought--ideas, the
topic of traditional philosophy.
New cognitive research and brain mapping studies are coherent with
Peirce's earlier inquiry and and are
discovering the neurology of embodied mind, in what George Lakoff
and Mark Johnson call the The Body in the Mind. A
significant permutation in cognitive research occurs
with George Lakoff’s work and others for a theory of
metaphor logic. This study is gaining academic
acceptance and in so doing becomes an metaphor for
itself within the academy, as a representation of a
school of thought. While gaining recognition, the
metaphor enters into common usage, migrates into the
language of various disciplines, eventually
becoming a new focal icon. Metaphors for theories
about embodied logic in technology, philosophy,
literature and cognition are now converging with each
other, where theory then influences practice.
Places
of Gathering Space, Community and the Multiplayer Computer Game.
Presentation at the AILA
Multiliteracies Confernece - Ghent, Belgium. (Photograph Bart
Bonamie, 2003)
Earlier media studies considered embodiment, through
such proponents as Roland Barthes’ with his inquiry into the
cognitive effects of the film apparatus, on the spectator. New
digital technologies are now inspiring research into the
psychological apparatus of reading and using new media. Electronic
publishing and other digital media are raising questions into the
psychology of the apparatus of literature and art in visual
representation. The recognition of an evolving condition of
representation calls for new modes of reading and critique. This
work proposes that pictorial language is an emergent mode of
reading related to the proliferation of photography,
film, video and digital imaging, and considers how reading,
language and ideas are embodied through cognition and the logic of
metaphor. The idiom of the human figure in art is used as an
iconic metaphor for several discourses about embodiment, embodied
text and literacy.
Printing and mass production were precursors to this evolution of
written and graphic material.
William Blake (18th Century) produced his engraved and hand-painted
books of poetry and prophecy during the
technological revolution of the Enlightenment in the
late 1700s. His books were made using new
technology—the printing press, and combined
elaborate drawings of human figures with text. He
celebrated the human physical nature and imagination while
simultaneously resisting empiricism and the
constraints of scientific method. The post 1960’s fascination
with the body continues or perhaps resurrects
Blake’s viewpoint in new modes exemplified in the work of Allen
Ginsberg who claimed Blake his poetic champion.
As an
innovator, Blake struggled with public resistance
against the new media of his day. While the
consuming public of the late 18th century would
purchase books, they balked against the notion of
buying reproduced or printed art. Paradoxically few
of his elaborately illustrated printed books are
identical although his works are printed. Modern
reproduction proved difficult due to the graphical
complexity of the content, and because the original
engravings were lost. Full color printing was not
perfected for another three hundred years, but still
expensive. Ironically it is electronic publishing that allows Blake’s
uniquely crafted and obscure books to finally reach a
mass audience in the digital era. Blake is cited in
this New Alphabet both as an innovator in an earlier technologic
revolution, and as a proponent of embodiment.
Jean
Baudrillard’s concept of the simulacrum--the
reproduction of images of reality, substituting for reality, is a well
known metaphor for postmodern culture. The
simulacrum is the logical outcome of cultural
practices and technological innovations associated with mass
production and consumerism. According
to Walter Benjamin reproduction withers the aura of
original art by removing it from its context and
liquidating the traditional value of cultural
heritage into mass culture. From the printing press,
through photography, into film and digital
production of animated texts and graphics, the
simulacrum is an ever increasing momentum that seems
to erase the body in its fascination. Erasure then
fosters the renewed effort to recover and
reconstitute the body, using new media and new
technology to fashion new modes of expression and
fascination, leading to further erasure. As Blake described this
tension of polarities--"contraries" replays fluxing new metaphors
across history, which in turn seed new cultural
eras. In their agonistic interaction, like the yolk
and the embryo, these polarities are inseparable,
without breaking the egg, or as Lyotard proposes,
“without ending the game”. Critique continually
seeks the loci of reference in the question, where
is the beginning of the beginning?
