Western way of thought is basically repressive, search for a universal system of thought that shows the absolute truth and beauty through the use of binary oppositions. However, Derrida argues that we can never arrive at an absolute, final meaning. Neither at the beginning nor at the end is there a point at which the definitive meaning can be found, since there is neither a beginning nor an end.
According to Derrida, meaning is encoded between binary oppositions, but the first term is not always the valuable. Instead of accepting the slashes, rigid boundaries around the meanings Derrida wants to show how the truth can be so relative and how these binary oppositions are not opposite and can be exist together. Therefore he is interested in deconstructing, neglecting the boundaries between oppositions. Since meaning is not stable and always postponed; so it can never be finally fixed; that means different context give words different meanings, the centered language system can not have a constraining power over people. Actually, he radically deconstructs the traditional theatre, decentered the power of the text writer and gives each one a chance to write his/her role. In my response paper I am going to give two examples to reveal the role of the individual and how their inscribed bodies serve as a marker of (multiple) identities.
First case is going to be about one of the impressive and also unbearable performance of Orlan, French multimedia artist, which deconstructs the usual, taken for granted status of body and its unity in Derridean terms. Her performances are criticizing the essentialist views about body, especially female body and the concept of beauty, which are regarded as innate, immutable and God given in the context of Western metaphysical thinking. In the second case I am going to give a more radical example of Australian artist, Stelarc’s performance “Suspension”, which is an identity lack performance and challenges the sacredness of body since the artist hangs his nude body in flesh-hooks suspension.
“My body is my art” (Orlan)
Orlan is inspired by Duchamp, so considers her own body a "readymade" that means she describes her body as a combination of manufactured objects rather than a territorially defined pure unity. She cancels the function of aesthetic surgery and presents its an unusual meaning(s) through her performance.
Orlan’s performance could be read as a self determination of a woman, who is the creator, not the created and gains control over her body. Instead of having her body beautified, she uses surgery as a medium for a deviant project, to make her face ugly. What we have internalized as the nature or the territoriality of the body is an outcome of social and cultural norms and continuities. But Orlan’s performance underlines that there are possible constructions and multiple differences that challange imposed perceptions or “truth” about what we have learned. To deconstruct binary difference disrupts both ontological and corporeal security. If we interpret her body as a text, it is going to be obvious that her decision to change her bodily fixity also alters her textual stability. She disrupts the place of the words within the text and claims an alternative reading to the preexisting readings of body, and indeed enables a risky dream of control over life, deformation, paralysis and death.
The surgical operation is controlled by herself; the performance takes place under local anesthesia. At the end of the each surgery her look is constantly shifting, her face transforms something more ambiguous and looks different. As she changes her face, her body becomes more alien and more fragmented. Since Orlan writes her own destiny during her performance, she is not the victim or the passive patient, she is the subject and the object of the transformation.
“The body is obsolete” (Stelarc)
Stelarc subjects his body to hanging by flesh-hooks, attached to a number of rocks to be counterbalanced, in his Suspension performances. These performances determine the limits of the body in relation to forces of nature, particularly of gravity. The whole performance becomes a very physical extension of the body, where the skin begins to lose its shape and artist reaches the physical and psychological limitations of the body
Stelarc's artistic performance discovers the idea of "enhancing the body" both in a physical -technical- and psychological manner. Through Stelarc's work, we reach a third stage of corporeal existence since the body becomes both the subject and the object in order to discover its limitations and also its future. In his interview with Ctheory.net, Stelarc explains the meaning of the “obsolete body”, he states that: “The body lacks of modular design, technology is what defines the meaning of being human, it’s part of being human. Especially living in the information age, the body is biologically inadequate.”
As he argues that the suspension itself is an end, it is the mimicry of overcoming gravity. Suspending the body with hooks helps the body support itself, thus the body becomes it's own support structure. So, performance of hanging the body imitates the passivity of the flesh and emphasizes the inevitability of death in order to create new capacities for the living corporeality.
Postponed meaning: What counts as a body?
I tried to explain the how the binary opposition between mind and body or any dichotomies is no longer possible. Cartesian dualism put a hierarchy between the mind and the body. The mind constitutes the ultimate meaning, essence of men, whereas the body is excluded and acts just as a medium; and hence reality is only accessible through the mind that means body is just an object. Both Orlan and Stelarc erase the slashes between the dichotomy of mind and body, especially put the body at the centre of their performances, they have their bodies and they are their bodies indeed. Thus these two artists challenge the political, ethical and physical norms of the Western society; and their definition of body and absolute meaning.
Orlan and Stelarc use technology to inscribe their bodies. They use their bodies to inscribe their art. Body is not conceived as inferior to the mind. Each performance of the artists change the shape of their skins, they look different at the end of the each performance, so they gain different inscribed identities, which are constructed by its performers. Additionally, Orlan and Stelarc perform their corporeal transformations by putting their skins and also identities in a process of becoming rather then being since there is a postponement and transgression of the meaning in both performances. Their bodies or identities are both objects and subjects of the performances, therefore we could say that their performances’ should read through Derrida, and beyond the Cartesian duality of mind and body since it is both mind and body.
Yorum Gönder