BODIES UPON BODIES UPON BODIES ...
Descartes theorised the separation of mind from body (Descartes, 1986) And in placing intellect above flesh, grew man’s already overinflated ego. As he paces through the forest, layers of rubber, polyester, and leather neglect the delicacy of his central soles. Another layer of separation between us and our mortality: If I wear these shoes, I will forget that this dirt will decompose my body. If I stay indoors, I’ll forget that Gaia is chocking on the fumes from the ‘shoe making factory’ (Lovelock, 1979).
In separating mind from body, I may choose my skin: plaid and denim, that suits me right? No, no, tartan has more edge. The filtered body, the styled body, the dysphoric body, the lonely bodies…. Simultaneously stare in the mirror, praying for next season’s fashionable identity to fit a little better (Gabrielli, Baghi and Codeluppi, 2013). Who am I? thought the white girl because she had the privilege to, Is this body even mine? and fell into her 100% polyester bed sheets (decomposition time approx. 200 years) (Stanes and Gibson, 2017). They were pink – because of her vagina, and had little bears on them that made her smile (Kaiser, 2013). She’d never seen a bear in real life, nor did she know a full-grown grizzly bear would kill her in approximately 120 seconds, but she’d always liked them. She liked how capital had turned something terrifying into a commodity: plucked out the bears teeth and nails, tore out its muscles and replaced the gaping holes with polyfill (Perdue, 2012). She hoped the same would happen to her one day.
Attractive body, consumable body, sellable body. In separating mind from body, I am happy to exploit my skin. Recede into a representation of myself, encouraged by Instagram, aesthetics, starter packs, niche memes, how proud I am to own enough crap that I may label this façade as ‘alt girl’ (Debord, 1967). I AM my closet. It isn’t me that man raped, it was that dress I wore, oh how stupid I was to wear that dress. Or how stupid of this system for telling that young man that my mind is separated from my body, that this body is a sack of meat encased in textiles that clearly scream ‘FUCK ME’, because what other identity may a young woman have, than the desperation to be fucked, fixed or favoured by a man (Butler, 1999).
Maybe it’ll be better in the metaverse: digital body, intangible Body, representation of body. The internet may be the minds playground, our flesh finally lies severed behind, reconstructed in binary, may this finally be a place to deconstruct binary oppositions? Or has Zuckerberg’s colonisation of the digital space severed the possibility of us finding (constructing) Haraway’s cyborg utopia. It’s hard to imagine a world where technology hasn’t been infected by capital. But then again, this is why we use the imagery of the cyborg (Haraway, 1991). The cyborg does not disconnect mind from body, body from technology, technology (or the man-made) from nature. The cyborg fuses these elements, a harmonious everchanging reconstruction, loosely stitched together. A communal knowledge universally shared and transmitted, a community integrated fundamentally with the earth’s biosphere, understanding Gaia rather than working as her planetary repair man.
BUTLER, J. (1999). Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York, Routledge.
Debord, G. (1967). Society of the Spectacle. London, England: Rebel Press, London. Descartes, R., & Cottingham, J. (1986). SIXTH MEDITATION: The existence of material things, and the real distinction between mind and body, https://cpb-usw2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/5/25851/files/2016/11/SIXTH-MEDITATION1sgoo97.pdf (Accessed 8 March 2022).
Gabrielli, V., Baghi, I. and Codeluppi, V. (2013), "Consumption practices of fast fashion products: a consumer‐based approach", Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 206-224. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFMM-10-2011- 0076 (Accessed 15 March 2022).
Haraway, J. (1991). “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century”, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 149-181.
Kaiser, S. (2013). Fashion and Cultural Studies, Bloomsbury Publishing. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=1334428 (Accessed 7 March 2022).
Lovelock, J. (1979). Gaia: a new look at life on earth. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Perdue, D. (2012). Subversion of the revolutionary impulse: the influence of recuperation on the situationist international, 1957-1972, http://dl.uncw.edu/Etd/2012- 1/perdued/doyleperdue.pdf (Accessed 15 March 2022)
Stanes, E. and Gibson, C. (2017). Materials that linger: An embodied geography of polyester fabrics. Geoforum, 85: 27-36.