is only the dizzying multiplicity of the cut human, the human body as interminably cut,
fractured”
(Athanasiou 2003: 125).
During the pre-study for this project, I became concerned with the contemporary conflations of arguments, bodies (literally), and perspectives in the field of RGTs and biomedicine, and the potential for fragmentations on various levels inherent in past, current, and emerging medical and research practices. Listening to conference presentations at the time of data collection for this study, it sometimes seemed to me as if reports about biomedical practices that were based on the fragmentation of the body were followed by social scientific responses that seemed to oftentimes either lack a coherent argument and hence “zig-zag” through the terrain trying not to “hit” anyone, or that seemed to present an argument that missed, from my point of view, addressing important social or cultural components of the performance of biomedical practices. Zoloth’s presentation, as I referred to in the introduction to this study, can, from my experience of listening to it, illustrate this difficulty.
The theoretical matrix applied in this study has been developed in response to my experiences of the conflations of arguments, bodies, and perspectives. In order for the theoretical matrix of my study to grasp contemporary framings of bodies and of bodily substances, and in order to provide impulses in the area of social scientific research into biomedical issues at stake, I chose to first learn more about whose bodies are talked about and looked at in public spaces within biomedical developments at the time of data collection and how (these) bodies got framed in various sites and by various actors. As the analysis chapters will incorporate insights into media and art representations of bodies, the following section introduces notions of bodies in the public sphere, such as in media reports and art exhibits in order to provide an idea about bodies (or notions of bodies) that are missing in the overall picture and ways in which the theoretical matrix for this study relates and reacts to this. Within this learning process, I came to understand that writings that exalt, for example, the possible success of stem cell research, are often based upon an understanding of the possibility to fragment bodies as a precursor to combining bodily substances acquired from different bodies. Such writing frequently also embeds the future prospects [41] of medical research in present day constructions and representations of medical needs and wishes (Syed 2006, Kitzinger et al. 2003). In this line of thought, the practice of cloning an embryo from which to derive a stem cell line for the envisioned future treatment of future patients creates a link between the present and the future, bridging the gap between the current state of not yet having any treatment available (nor the techniques envisioned as necessary for the development of the treatment) and the future wish for treatment yet to be achieved. During the time of data collection for this study, donors of bodily substances in the field of stem cell research in the UK (and elsewhere) were most often women receiving fertility treatment or women who were undergoing hormonal stimulation solely to “donate” eggs for research. For the first group, these women were going through a very specific time in their lives, with bodily experiences being closely linked to feelings of inferiority (Throsby 2004). Thus, their “donation” of eggs or embryos is likely encompassed within their experiences of treatment.
In relation to the comparable invisibility of donors’ bodies (in a majority of the media) in the process, the bodies of future recipients are those that are made visible in, for example, the UK media coverage that I researched. Following the announcement that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) had granted the first UK license for embryonic stem cell research involving somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT)23 to the Newcastle Fertility Centre in 2004, future patients, rather than egg or embryo donors, were featured as visible actors in the media stories (Throsby and Roberts 2008). The representation of a young woman living with diabetes, whose story was featured at the time of the announcement, provided readers with an image of a future treatment recipient through a contemporary individual narrative tied to a present-time body (Wainwright and Williams 2008). Reference to the life story of an individual allows for different conceptual approaches toward the validation for scientific research; consequently, the research can be viewed as closely linked to individual needs even if due to the basic state of the research and cost factors involved in the possible realization of treatments. The people referred to as potential recipients may realistically never be eligible recipients of treatment.
Building connections between (future) bodies, which can as yet only be imagined, and present subjects in media reports about biomedical research, is a practice that I understand as writing practices of binding. The binding of future bodies to the stories of individuals (from everyday life or those heroic ones such as the Christopher Reeve narrative) lends individual narratives to science fiction bodies. Indeed, the narrative location of the late actor Christopher Reeve, best known for his role as Superman, within the story of stem cell research24 [42] further blends the imagined borders between “real-life” individuals, fictional characters, and the science fiction bodies destined to become scientific facts with the advent of contemporary biotechnologies. This narrative convention overcomes the finiteness of current bodies, which are constituted as a.) endlessly fixable through medical practice and b.) potentially immortal, a constitution enhanced by linkages made to science fiction bodies.
The visibility of particular bodies, as examined above, exists from my point of view in a tension with the complexities of practices of imbuing and denying subjectivity in processes of representation. A report of the second face transplant performed in spring 2006 in China, which used facial components such as a “new upper lip, cheek and nose from a brain dead donor” employed a similar approach (as described above) to telling a story about bodily substances which are put into motion through medical practice (Khamsi 2006: online source). The article cited provides the reader with the name, sex, profession, and details of the life story of the recipient of the facial components but provides no further information about the donor other than his diagnosis or status as having been categorized as “brain-dead.” There is no subject to be found when the upper lip received by the recipient is called “new” and is, therefore, “bare” of every possible connection to the donor, who we can imagine to be an adult (because of the assumed size of the facial elements transplanted) and who, therefore, would have had a lifetime of expressing himself with facial components which, through the storytelling related to the process of medical intervention, are erased from an embodied history and reconstituted as “new.” This example illustrates how different spaces are categorized as those in which bodies and embodiment become a matter to and of, and are impacted by novel medical practices that are above and beyond anything previously imagined as possible. What I understand to happen here is not only the “making of” a “need” to develop new medical practices, but also the media-supported establishment and spreading of narratives of a specific sort, which lead to notions of different “bodies being embodied” in different sets of locations, connected to different sets of values, and so on.
These processes of challenging understandings of embodiment, and the mobility of bodily substances and body parts, are occurring additionally and are publicly accessible outside of the sphere of medical developments and their representation in the media. During a research visit to the US in the spring of 2006, an exhibition called Controversial Cadavers toured the US, provoking ethical discussions. Walking around New York City, entering the metro station, [43] noticing advertisements for the exhibit, I was confronted by exposed (skinless) bodies displayed on posters. The exhibit comprised skinless, partly fragmented, male (for the most part) cadavers of formerly imprisoned individuals who had been positioned in sporting poses (playing golf, football, and so forth). Skinless bodies shipped across borders in boxes, from my perspective, act as sarcastic continuation of imprisonment and the curatorial decision to have bodies be displayed in sports poses seem to be a continuation of prisoners’ bodies movement having been tightly choreographed during imprisonment.
Only one room of the exhibit in New York City had an additional note on the door, warning parents not to leave their children unsupervised while visiting the room. Otherwise there seemed to be no concern about anyone gazing at skinless
