Representations of the Postmodern Body

Melissa Rourke Medicine & Culture

Final Paper Jean Comaroff

06/06/06

In The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies, Donna Haraway describes how today in

the postmodern era people have become ‘cyborgs’. No longer the closed units they once

were, bodies are able to be deconstructed and reconstructed using foreign or mechanical

parts. With the advent of such medical capabilities Haraway posits the question of what

is happening to the self, to one’s identity? The artwork of contemporary artist Wangechi

Mutu embodies this crisis of the postmodern body which Haraway describes,

representing images of fragmented bodies and identities through her elaborate collages.

Donna Haraway explains that, in the postmodern era, “bodies are not born; they

are made” (Haraway 372). With today’s medical technology “Any objects or persons can

be reasonably thought of in terms of disassembly and reassembly; no “natural”

architectures constrain system design” (Haraway 378). People are no longer closed,

sacred units, but are permeable and open to restructuralization. Foreign parts, like organs

or mechanical parts, can easily be introduced and incorporated into a person’s body. For

this reason, doctors can be likened to creators or artists, deconstructing and then

reconstructing bodies out of the available parts and technologies. “Scientific construction

takes on the particular resonances of high art and genius” (Haraway 389). In constructing

their artwork (the restructured human body), the available materials at hand are wide,

varied, and constantly growing in number and possibility.

Doctors today have many materials, both natural and technological, with which to

work. With the availability of organs and blood (through donors and cadavers) and

increased mobility of these parts through global connectivity, capabilities of organ and

blood transplants are increased. Human beings have become more interconnected, more

mobile, and more technological. New technologies make it possible for mechanical

implants (like pacemakers) to take the place of, or support existing bodily systems and

processes. In addition, the promise of new technologies is ever-present; with the

progression of stem cell research, genetic engineering, and genomics, new innovations

and technological possibilities are on the rise.

The artwork of Wangechi Mutu’s, representing images of the bodily self, reflects

“the fragmented postmodern subject” (Haraway 377) constantly being deconstructed and

reconstructed. In her artwork, Mutu constructs elaborate, collaged images of female

bodies from magazine clippings. The types of magazines she uses range from fashion

and porn magazines, to automobile and hunting magazines, to National Geographic and

scattered African magazines including Africa Adorned. She carefully deconstructs

images from these magazines, choosing interesting parts and pieces. Then taking these

parts, which range from mechanical to facial parts, she reorganizes them to construct new

bodily forms and images.

In her collages women, creatures, and mechanical parts “mutate and morph within

a single figure. Disembodied parts merge and clash with others. Shifts in scale abound”

(Turner 2). In A Passing Thought such Frightening Ape (2003), for example, bird talons

replace female legs and feet. In Mask (2006) an African mask becomes a woman’s body,

texturizing her once smooth skin. In In Killing Fields Sweet Butterfly Ascent (2003) ox-

heads become hair decorations, motorcycle parts replace hand and wrist, while two

different colored eyes accentuate the face. In Bloody Old Head Games (2005) a female

leg becomes a chin, a head becomes an ear, and the pleated leather of a woman’s purse

becomes skin. Mutu describes her collages saying, “Bodies are attached onto other

bodies, creating a latticework of limbs, expressions, and narrative. I rely on that method

in my work…The language of body alteration is a powerful inspiration” (Farrell 141)

Both the process of constructing her artwork and the resulting images speak to

Haraway’s notion of the postmodern cyborg. “The cyborg is a text, machine, body, and

metaphor” (Haraway 379). Similar to the doctor who constructs bodies from

deconstructed, available parts, Mutu creates bodily images from deconstructed magazine

images. Human organs, machines, and technology are all incorporated into Mutu’s

collaged images, just as they are incorporated into postmodern bodies by medical

intervention. Thus the manner of construction and components used, in both the case of

medical professionals and Mutu, are similar.

Haraway writes on how the activity of the medical profession creates difficulties

for how bodies are represented in the postmodern age. Postmodern science has focused

its eye inward and has become concerned with the internal nature of the body. This

creates a problem for general representation and comprehension of internal bodily space,

as it is an invisible realm. Not only is the internal invisible and hard to comprehend, it is

also a realm over which an individual is powerless. The natural reaction to this situation

is fear, fear of something unknown; worse, something inside of you, a part of you, over

which you harbor no control or understanding. “In the supposed earthly space of our own

interiors we see nonhumanoid strangers who are supposed to be the means by which our

bodies sustain our integrity and individuality, indeed our humanity, in the face of a world

of others. We seem invaded not just by the threatening “nonselves” that the immune

system guards against, but more fundamentally by our own strange parts” (Haraway 393).

This situation becomes heightened when something internal becomes

problematic, when a person contracts a disease. This makes comprehension even more

difficult and therefore dramatically increases a person’s fear. The idea that beyond the

external lurks internal unknowns (dangers, threats, diseases) terrifies people. People

search for a tangible, visible, controllable reason behind the unknown, behind their

disease. In this situation of bodily uncertainty and loss of control, metaphors, false ideas,

and confused perceptions arise and pervade. Haraway cites the example of colonized

Africa being viewed as the source of all disease and contagion.

“Expansionist Western medical discourse in colonizing contexts has been obsessed with the notion of contagion and hostile penetration of the healthy body, as well as of terrorism and mutiny from within. The approach to disease involved a stunning reversal: the colonized was perceived as the invader. In the face of the disease genocides accompanying European “penetration” of the globe, the “colored” body of the colonized was constructed as the dark source of infection, pollution, disorder, and so on, that threatened to overwhelm white manhood (cities, civilization, the family, the white personal body) with its decadent emanations…Discourses on parasitic diseases and AIDS provide a surfeit of examples” (Haraway 393). Like Haraway, Mutu expresses concerns about the pervading postmodern fear of

threatening, internal diseases. In her artwork, Mutu mixes both external and internal

parts to give a sense of fear, of danger, of disease. Mutu focuses on the female body in

her images claiming that “Women’s bodies are particularly vulnerable to the whims of

changing movements, governments, and social norms. They’re like sensitive charts—

they indicate how a society feels about itself. It’s also disturbing how women attack

themselves in search of a perfect image, and to assuage the imperfections that surround

them” (Farrell 142). Her conception of women as socially vulnerable, manifests itself in

and pervades her work.

Mixing external bodily components like faces, limbs, and skin with internal body

parts like blood, Mutu creates an aura of a threatening, dangerous body. “Her female

figures toy with the abject; each is an instance of a “body in revolt.” Yet these bodies are

revolting against what is expected of them in productive and necessary ways” (McDowell

4). Through her work Mutu plays with the boundary between the body’s internal and

external components, exposing the invisible, internal qualities of the body. The image of

blood persists in most of her collages, intertwined with or overlapping other parts of the

external body. In Misguided Little Unforgivable Heirarchies (2005), for example, blood

splatter fearfully looms around both figures. Again in Bloody Old Head Games (2005)

the faces and heads of all the individuals are splattered with blood and which also

dominates the background of the work.

Mutu further investigates connections between internal and external bodily

components through notions and perceptions of internal diseases. From 2004-2005 she

created a series of collages interpreting and representing diseased female sexual organs.

These included the works: Cancer of the Uterus (2005), Complete Prolapsus of the

Uterus (2004), Uterine Catarrh (2004), Histology of the Different Classes of Uterine

Tumours (2004), Tumors of the Uterus (2005), Indurated Ulcers of the Cervix (2005),

Fibroid Tumors of the Uterus (2005), Cervical Hypertrophy (2005), Primary Syphilitic

Ulcers of the Cervix (2005), and Ovarian Cysts (2005).

For these works Mutu starts with found medical illustration paper illustrating each

of the diseases. Using these medical papers as a base, she uses her collage techniques to

build up complex, layered images upon them. Layering clippings of external bodily parts

like eyes, teeth, ears, and legs she creates a distorted, yet complete image of a female

face. In each piece the female face is twisted and distorted, reminding the viewer of the

pain and suffering which accompanies disease. Thus the resulting collage of diseased

internal and external female parts creates a sense of fear and danger, the source of which

arises from within one’s own body; even worse, in this series of representations, the

source of disease is rooted in female sexual organs: a foundation of female identity.

Haraway is concerned about a loss of identity which occurs in the postmodern

age. At a moment when “no objects, spaces, or bodies are sacred in themselves” and

“any component can be interfaced with any other” what is happening to individuality?

(Haraway 378). How many foreign or mechanical parts can a person be constructed of

until they lose their former identity? “The logic of the permeability among the textual,

the technic, and the biotic and of the deep theorization of all possible texts and bodies as

strategic assemblages has made the notions of “organism” or “individual” extremely

problematic” (Haraway 387). Haraway perceives a danger in the fusion of individuals

and views the postmodern body as a “construct of always vulnerable and contingent

individuality” (Haraway 388).

Through her work Mutu, like Haraway, is putting into question the boundary

between what is considered self and non-self. In her collages, composed of a

combination fractured images from various other places (taken out of their original

context) to create a new bodily image, where is the self? Is the final bodily image a

complete whole self or just a summation of parts? Is there a complete identity being

portrayed or just a chaotic loss of identity? Is disease a part of the body arising internally

or does it exist outside of the body, invading from external sources? Of course there is no

definite answer to these questions, but through her bloody imagery and the aura of danger

created by Mutu, it seems that she, like Haraway, views the fusion of identities in the

postmodern era as a dangerous endeavor which is difficult to conceptualize.

When people perceive Mutu’s artwork, they instantly recognize an image, but

then immediately realize that they have misrecognized it. It takes some time to

distinguish the different parts and details within the work. What is normal looks

abnormal and vice versa. Mutu states that “Displacement anxiety and a fractured identity

are implied in my drawings; there are mutilations and awkward attachments in the

collage work” (Farrell 142). Thus, she not only creates an image which is in itself

fractured and distorted, but puts into question the viewers point of view by fracturing

their general perception of everyday images and bodies.

When interviewed about her Pin-up series, a series of works depicting female

amputees, Mutu says, “I wanted you to walk up to them assuming you were going to see

these pretty, interestingly posed females. It takes people some time to see that every

single one of them has suffered some trauma or alteration that is severe and aggressive”

(McDowell 1). In other works of hers, “Images of altered or slightly mutilated bodies

with diseased skin sometimes looks like bizarre and colorful fabric costumes” (Farrell

142). In all of Mutu’s work there is a sense of fractured identities, of incomplete

individuals that are not fully recognized or understood, which is similar to Haraway’s

sense of the postmodern body.

Issues of fragmented bodies and identities and the fear of internal and pervading

diseases are dominating concerns which face the postmodern subject. Where are the

boundaries that define person’s self and identity? How can the internal realm of the body

be effectively represented and understood? How can diseases be efficiently represented

and understood? Both Donna Haraway through her writing and Wangechi Mutu through

her artwork present this crisis of the postmodern body. Although Haraway does not posit

any elaborate solutions to resolve this crisis, she does mention the therapeutic practice of

‘visualization’ or ‘imaging’ which is being used in many clinics today.

“In visualization self-help, the sufferer learns in a state of deep relaxation to

image the processes of disease and healing, in order to both gain more control in many

senses and to engage in a kind of meditation on the meanings of living and dying from an

embodied vantage point in the microplaces of the postmodern body” (Haraway 396).

Perhaps this method of visualization is an ideal way of dealing with the crises of

fractured identities, disease, and self-understanding. Perhaps people need to redefine and

revisualize their identities and bodies with respect to the new postmodern situation at

hand.

Haraway herself says that “A cognitive being gathers “information” about things

and builds up a mental “model”… Knowledge is a storehouse of representations that can

be called upon to do reasoning and that can be translated into language. Thinking is a

process of manipulating those representations” (Haraway 380). If redefinition and

revisualization of bodies and identities will lead to a deeper comprehension and

acceptance of the postmodern body, then perhaps it is the solution to the current crisis. If

disease becomes represented in a visual form as an image or representation, perhaps fear

of it will cease to be so rampant. If so, the representations presented by artists like

Wangechi Mutu, who portray the current fragmented, disease-ridden state of the body,

will aid in the process of society’s coming to terms with a new understanding and

conceptualization of the postmodern body and identity.

Works Cited Farrell, Laurie Ann. Looking Both Ways: Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora. New York: Museum for African Art, 2003. Haraway, Donna. The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies: Determinations of Self In

Immune System Discourse. Body Politics—Past and Present. Berekely: University of California Press, 1993.

McDowell, Tara. New Work: Wangechi Mutu. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of

Modern Art, 2006. Turner, Elisa. Going Solo: Wangechi Mutu finds inspiration in her native Africa at

Miama Art Exhibit. Miami Art Museum. http://users.telenet.be/african-shop/miami_art_museum.htm