In the chapter “New Science, One Flesh” from Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, Thomas Laqueur traces the emergence of “the one-sex body of antiquity” from the classical anatomical texts of Galen and Hippocrates through the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution (63). According to the one-sex model, there was “only one canonical body and that body was male” (ibid). Just as God formed Eve from Adam’s rib, women were seen to be simply “inverted men” with their reproductive organs folded within the body instead of without (70). Just as Emily Martin endeavors to reveal the “gender stereotypes hidden within the scientific language of biology,” Laqueur takes the visual discourse of Renaissance anatomical representations as his subject (Martin, 486). He wishes to show “that the anatomical representation of male and female is dependent on the cultural politics of representation and illusion, not on evidence about organs, ducts, or blood vessels. No image, verbal or visual, of ‘the facts of sexual difference’ exists independently of prior claims about the meaning of such distinctions” (66). Laqueur spends some time analyzing the representations of cadavers in Renaissance and earlier anatomical texts. He initially offers several examples of the way in which female cadavers were objectified by the voyeuristic gaze of male scientists. However, he then goes on to show how both male, female, and "indeterminate" cadavers were eroticized in these texts. He writes, "in them the dead act as if they were still somehow alive-not cadavers at all-and thus able to certify personally the facts that the anatomist presents and the epistemological soundness of anatomy generally" (75).
What do these cadavers tell us about ourselves? Through studying and representing the bodies of the dead, can we somehow come to touch the very essence of ourselves? As in the images above, can we gaze upon our skin while we are still inside of it? Can we ever truly peer at our own image without the skin of culture? How clean and trustworthy is the mirror?
In the picture below, we see a lone cadaver standing on a hilltop, presumably somewhere in Italy (the picture comes from Andreas Vesalius, the father of modern anatomy). This picture is interesting for a few reasons. For one, it shows the way in which the study of the human body was valued as the highest pursuit of Truth. The cadaver is positioned at the highest point in the picture, and above the line of his lower thighs it is all sky with the buildings of human civilization dwarfed in the distance. That he is pictured in the natural environment of the hillside as opposed to the cultural context of the village also illuminates the degree to which the study and representation of anatomy was presumed to be outside the purview of culture and society. The cadaver was simply a natural object. This picture might be said to “invoke the authority, first, of a dramatically opened, exposed body and then, derivatively, of naturalistic representation itself” (75).
Yet compare the picture below, also from Vesalius:
Here, by contrast, we see “the majestic power of science to confront, master, and represent the truths of the body in a self-consciously theatrical and public fashion” (72). The anatomy theater is precisely that: a theater. As such, we must recognize that inherent in artistry is artifice. Decisions about inclusion, exclusion, and aesthetics are always present in any sort of visual representation. We will easily admit to the artistic license of Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, but why is it so much more difficult for us to grasp artistry at work in scientific texts?
Laqueur takes as his subject a particular historical moment when anatomy was still trying to prove itself as the ultimate arbiter of truth about the human body, but this article actually made me wonder about more recent anatomical representations of the body and, specifically, cadavers. How much has changed about the way we represent cultural values and social politics through cadavers? A few years back the 'Bodies' exhibit came to Seattle. 'Bodies' is the Chinese spin off of 'Body Worlds,' the hugely popular traveling exhibit featuring cadavers preserved by a new process of plastination and elaborately posed developed by the German anatomist Gunther von Hagens. If you saw the new "Casino Royale," Daniel Craig actually runs through the Miami 'Body Worlds' exhibit at the very beginning chasing a bad guy. There was a lot of controversy about 'Bodies' because it was unclear whether the specimens had willingly donated their bodies or whether they were political prisoners subjected to horrible human rights abuses. Many people I knew chose not to go because they did not want to support such abuses.
The whole pedagogical model of both 'Bodies' and 'Body Worlds' is pretty fascinating. These exhibits are intended for the public at large, both medical professionals and laymen. They build on a field of “edutainment” first popularized by Walt Disney in the 1940s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edutainment). The exhibits seek to engage and educate viewers through the artistic spectacle of their displays. They do so quite self-consciously, referencing famous works of art like Rodin’s The Thinker. But just like the illustrations of the Renaissance, these specimens bely both gender and racial stereotypes.
Scrolling the Frequently Asked Questions on the “Bodies’ website I came upon this:
Why use real human specimens instead of constructed models?
As Dr. Ray Glover, chief medical director for BODIES...The Exhibition states, “Seeing promotes understanding, and understanding promotes the most practical kind of body education possible. The body doesn’t lie!” So, unlike models that idealize the body through the eyes of an artist, the specimens in this exhibition will show you the body and its parts as they really exist. Idealized models have been used for many years to teach about the body. However they don’t allow for any variation in structure and variation--which is one of the most important things to see how bodies are made up and different. As medical students and individuals have less time for the study of anatomy, it is even more important to have these unique specimens to give them both a greater understanding of anatomy and some sense of the variation of the human organism. (emphasis mine)
Even as it invokes classical and contemporary art through the posing of cadavers, ‘Bodies’ claims to be simply displaying the transparent, truthful, natural body. Education, here, is “practical” and, therefore, asocial, acultural, and apolitical. The exhibit will show you “variation” in anatomical structure but not make any mention of racial difference. ‘Bodies’ is not idealizing any one body over another. It has no agenda. Or so it claims.
I did go see the ‘Bodies’ exhibit and found many of the representational choices offensive. While most of the cadavers were men (this makes me wonder about the percentages of male and female political prisoners), there was at least one female I remember. What I remember most vividly is that her breasts were intact and rather prominently featured (she seemed to be jutting her chest out). The only other place where women's bodies were somewhat implicated was in an optional room of embryos and fetuses at various stages of development. This room was separate from the rest of the exhibit and featured a big sign warning that what was inside might be upsetting to some people. This makes me think of Lynn Morgan's article about the fetuses in Mount Holyoke's basement. In all the time that has passed since those fetuses were collected the understanding of what a fetus is in our shared discourse has clearly shifted quite a bit.
While there were not many female specimens to be seen at ‘Bodies,’ I was able to locate a few images of specimens from the ‘Body Worlds’ exhibit online. In the first image we see a female cadaver with her head and arm splayed back and to the side. While it is difficult to interpret her pose without the context of the rest of the setting (is she dancing? engaged in some other activity?), it is fair to note again that her chest becomes the focal point of the shot. The second image is even more provocative. In it we see a pregnant woman posing almost like a pin-up. The background screen suggests that, perhaps, this is a Japanese woman. This adds a racial or ethnic narrative to layer onto the gendered one we have been discussing.
Many of the other (male) cadavers in ‘Bodies’ were posed with various sports props. What was offensive here was that here were these Chinese bodies posed with props like rugby balls and (American) footballs. As far as I know (and I do not claim to know much), neither of these sports are especially popular in China. Yes, the audience here was American, but what was being performed on the bodies of the cadavers? And what was it teaching the visitors?
Consider the following visitor comments from the Bodies website:
“What an amazing view of how much we really are all the same.”
"More amazing than any art gallery."
"I learned more here than I could in any classroom."
But the point is precisely that the exhibit is both an art gallery and a classroom, and just like the anatomical illustrations that came nearly five hundred years before, it pretends to be oblivious to the ways in which it reinforces a particular sociocultural vision of difference and sameness: either by eroticizing difference in the case of gender or failing to see racial and ethnic differences and the critical consequences they entailed for the owners of those bodies when they were still alive.
Writing about her quest to reveal the gendered language of biological texts, Emily Martin notes:
One clear feminist challenge is to wake up sleeping metaphors in science...although the literary convention is to call such metaphors “dead,” they are not so much dead as sleeping, hidden within the scientific content of texts--and all the more powerful for it. Waking up such metaphors, by becoming aware of when we are projecting cultural imagery onto what we study, will improve our ability to investigate and understand nature. Waking up such metaphors, by becoming aware of their implications, will rob them of their power to naturalize our social conventions about gender. (501)
We might add race, ethnicity, sexuality, socioeconomic status, ability and any number of other markers in the discourse of identity politics to Martin’s list. Is there a way that we can ever learn about our bodies, their differences and similarities, without reproducing social stereotypes? Or is it simply important that we acknowledge the inherent bias or point of view of any representation?
Works Cited
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edutainment
http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/bodies.html
Laqueur, Thomas. “New Science, One Flesh.” Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990. Pp. 149-192.
Martin, Emily, 1991. “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles.” Signs 16(3): 485-501.
Morgan, Lynn M. “Materializing the Fetal Body, Or, What are those corpses doing in Biology’s Basement?” Lynn M. Morgan and Meredith W. Michaels, eds. Fetal Subjects, Feminist Positions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Pp. 43-60.
Images (In Order of Appearance in the Text):
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