THE MEDIATED BODY

Faculty of Arts and Culture

Universiteit Maastricht

(Prof. dr. J. van Dijck, dr. B. Pasveer, dr. R. van de Vall, dr. J. Wachelder, prof. dr. R. Zwijnenberg)

 

 

GENERAL OUTLINE

 

Research goals and questions

 

The general aim of the program is to describe and conceptualize the interrelations between knowledge formation, representational conventions, technological interventions, cultural dissemination, and subjective experiences that mediate the human body and its boundaries.

The program consists of five related philosophical, historical, sociological, and anthropological research projects investigating various medical, scientific and artistic ways of visualizing the interior human body and its boundaries. By focusing on visual representations of the body’s interior and boundaries, we set out to formulate a theory of the mediated body that allows us to understand the various dimensions involved in its mediation. By concentrating on mediation we aim at a comprehensive treatment and a new perspective on traditional philosophical themes as the relationship between subject and object, the status of knowledge, and the experienced body in its social, technological and cultural context.

 

Theoretical framework; coherence and surplus value of the programmatic set up

 

The central subject of this program is the human body as it is mediated. Whenever the human body has been deemed worthy of serious philosophical attention, it has been clear that it can neither be considered as a fixed, self-contained, self-sufficient entity, nor as clearly demarcated from the outside physical and social world. A discussion of the body as a source of meaning necessarily entails a discussion of its historically specific embedding, even if this is not always explicitly articulated. Yet what a body is and what it is capable of, where it begins and ends, how it is cared for and used, how it is understood and experienced, has been subject to changes due to developments apparently ‘outside’ its boundaries, yet profoundly altering what it –  at least in its own perception  - contained and excluded. 

            As the human body is always both object and subject of historical change, it is always mediated. However, its mediation itself has seldom been singled out as an object of philosophical study. A very promising and innovative venue to philosophical problems concerning subjective experience and objective knowledge, their situated historical settings and social construction, is to study mediation by focusing on the history of the medical and artistic visualization of the body’s interior and boundaries. Between the early fifteenth and late twentieth century, a plethora of visual and representational instruments has been developed assisting in understanding and conveying new insights into the body. From the pen of the anatomical illustrator to advanced endoscopic techniques, technologies of visualization have mediated our perception of the body through an intricate mixture of (empirical) scientific investigation, artistic looking and technological equipment. Each new technology promised in its own way to lay bare and make manifest the body’s hidden insides, thereby mapping anew its relation to and differentiation from its surroundings. These practices of ‘opening up’ and describing the body’s interior not only affected its contents and margins as an object. As their practitioners themselves possess and act through their bodies, these visual technologies have a reflexive dimension as well. The body of the investigating or visualizing subject is as much involved and affected as the body observed. It is so in a conceptual sense (what is the body, what is knowledge, what can be known about the body and how does the body know?), in a social sense (investigation as a hierarchically structured interaction between bodies), and in a phenomenological sense (the experience of someone else’s body through that of the body that is one’s own). With the invention of technologies that enable to visualize the interior of living bodies, this reflexivity has become even more intricate since it has become possible for the body observed to see itself as well.

            This interdisciplinary research project has a historical and a systematic component. The combination of two historical with two contemporary studies enables us to foreground the importance of a theory of mediation for the philosophical understanding of the body. From a historical point of view, we articulate changes in the mediation of the body by marking three periods of technological, scientific and/or artistic innovation in the visual representation of the interior body or its boundaries. These are: the anatomical dissection and representation practice of the seventeenth and eighteenth century (project 1); the introduction of lithography, microscopy and photography in the depiction of skin in the nineteenth century (project 2); and the use of ultrasound and endoscopy in the second half of the twentieth century (project 3 and 4). Each project approaches the mediated body from different disciplinary perspectives, such as the history of philosophy (in particular epistemology), medical history, the history and sociology of science, the history of art, art theory and aesthetics (project 1 and 2); the social and cultural study of science and technology (project 3); philosophical anthropology, aesthetics and art theory (project 4).

            The program’s interdisciplinary approach enables us to study mediation in its multiple dimensions. Coherence is obtained by the consistency in the research questions. For each period and technique we will examine the interrelation between five essential aspects of mediation: knowledge formation (involving observation, sensory perception, theoretical knowledge and their varying relations), representational conventions, technological intervention (comprising technical tools and settings and artistic/medial practices), cultural dissemination (the communication of gained insights, representations, or technologies, to a broader public), and subjective experiences. For each period and technique we will analyze to what extent these interrelations are constitutive for the body and its boundaries and how we can conceptualize ingredients for a theory of the mediated body that allow us to understand the various dimensions involved in its historical mediation. The development of this theory will be the subject of the fifth, synthesizing project, which will both contribute to and draw upon the theoretical results of the other projects.

            A theory of the mediated body should combine several, interrelated, levels of historical and systematic investigation. A discursive level, focusing on the historical development and impact of theoretical knowledge, technological tools and representational conventions; a sociological level, investigating the history and workings of material, institutional and social settings and practices; and a phenomenological level, tracing changes in the experiential relations between bodies, images and apparatuses. As there is no unifying theoretical framework doing equal justice to all these levels, the development of such a framework is one of the main goals of the project. To do so, we draw upon several theoretical traditions, such as the history of ideas, the history of science (with a special interest for instruments) social constructivist studies of science and technology, and phenomenological studies of embodied subjectivity and of aesthetics. The fifth, synthesizing, project will be devoted to the comparative analysis of these theories, tracing their respective limits and affinities, with the explicit aim of formulating a comprehensive theory of mediation.

 

Based upon above outlined historical and theoretical-systematic research questions, we propose the following five concrete research projects:

1. Philosophy, Anatomy, and Representation (0.75 fte, post-doc, four years)

2. Depicting Skin (1 fte, research assistant/OIO, four years)

3. Ultrasound, Endoscopy, and the Visualization of the Body (1 fte, research assistant/OIO, four years)

4. Mirroring the Interior Body  (0.6 fte, postdoc, four years)

5. Toward a Theory of the Mediated Body  (0,4 fte, senior researcher, four years)

 

Each from their own particular perspective, the five projects will be concerned with the major research questions articulated above. The first four projects can be executed as independent studies that can perfectly stand alone, yet in combination the five projects will have a substantial surplus value. Together they demonstrate the philosophical importance of theorizing the body as mediated, bring out the historical development of this mediation and articulate its multiple dimensions.

 

Although research on the 'body' is currently popular among Dutch scholars from a variety of disciplines, there is no systematic effort to theorize the aspect of ‘mediation', neither in The Netherlands, nor abroad. By nature of its design, this kind of project fits the interdisciplinary framework typifying the Faculty of Arts and Culture at the University of Maastricht, where philosophers, historians, art theorists and sociologists of science collaborate in both teaching and research. Five staff members of this Faculty will be involved in this program: prof. dr. R. Zwijnenberg, dr. J. Wachelder, prof. dr. J. van Dijck, dr. B. Pasveer, and dr. R. van de Vall.

            Prof. Dr. R. Zwijnenberg will supervise project 1 in collaboration with Dr. Julie. V. Hansen (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) an international expert in Renaissance art. Project 2 will be supervised by  prof. Dr. R. Zwijnenberg and dr. J. Wachelder, in collaboration with Prof. dr. J.W. Arends, anatomist-pathologist (UM) and Dr. A. Cunningham (Cambridge University). Project 3 will be supervised by prof. dr. J. van Dijck and dr. B. Pasveer, in collaboration with dr. Lisa Cartwright (Rochester University), and prof. Dr. Madeleine Akrich (CSNR, Paris). Project 4 will be supervised by dr. R. van de Vall. Dr. R. van de Vall will be in charge of Project 5. Together with prof. dr. Zwijnenberg, she will organize an annual forum where research results and insights will be exchanged. In addition to providing the project's synthesis, she will also edit a collection of articles on this theme, which will be completed in the last year of the project. Prof. dr. J. van Dijck, dr. M. van Rijsingen (UvA), and dr. J. Slatman will organize a major exhibition on Body Art in the new body-museum Asklepion (Rotterdam) in 2003.

            As a research project, 'The Mediated Body' will have a central place in research school WTMC, the Dutch School of Science, Technology and Modern Culture, as part of the section 'Representation of Science and Technology', coordinated by the applicants, prof. dr. J. van Dijck and prof. dr. R. Zwijnenberg; research assistants and post-docs will participate in the scholarly activities of WTMC, and will receive their academic training in this research school. Prof. dr. ir. W. Bijker, scientific director of WTMC, will be involved in parts of this project. Dr. Christina Lammer (postdoc Universität Wien) and Yutaka Yoshinaka. (PhD-student, Copenhagen University), both working in the area of medical imaging, have received grants to spend three months in Maastricht to join our research group.

            Besides the Faculty of Arts and Culture, the University of Maastricht's medical school harbors a unique MA-program in medical-scientific illustration. The departments of Radiology and Anatomy of the University Hospital Maastricht have also agreed to support this proposal. Prof. dr. R. Vos (Health Sciences) will be asked to advice on project 3. Beyond the University of Maastricht and the research school WTMC, we have solicited and will gratefully accept the scientific expertise and valuable insights of prof. dr. E. Houwaart, medical historian at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, dr. ir. B. ter Haar Romeny (Univer­sity of Utrecht, Image Science Institute); prof. dr. N. Oudshoorn (University Twente, Gender and Technology) and dr. D. Draaisma (University of Groningen, Psychology).

PROJECT 1: PHILOSOPHY, ANATOMY, AND REPRESENTATION (0.75 fte, post-doc)

 

Project description

Under the influence of Kant, the interdependence of anatomy and philosophy from the seventeenth century onwards has been largely ignored in modern studies on the history of philos­ophy and history of ideas. This post-doctoral research project will lead to a historical reassessment of philosophical thinking on anatomy in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. However, the scope of the project is wider. Approaching the connection between philosophy and anatomy as part of a broader cultural phenomenon, the project will set out to unravel the complex relationships between artistic and scientific representation of the human body, and philosophical and aesthetic ideas on perception, sensual experience, and knowledge formation of the human body. Using the anatomical works of the Dutch anatomist Govard Bidloo as a case study, the project will elucidate how the human body is mediated in an interplay of philosophical and aesthetic theories, scientific knowledge, representational practices, and technological developments, in the formative years of modern anatomical science.

            The importance of anatomical practice to early modern philosophy is clearly visible in philosophical treatises starting with the works of Descartes. Descartes was extensively versed in the physiological and medical tradition of the period immediately preceding his own (including Vesalius); he was well acquainted with the work of all important Greek, Latin and Medieval writers on medicine and anatomy, and with certain medical scholars of the seventeenth century, such as Harvey. Moreover, he also performed actual dissection on eyes, brains, lungs, and hearts, and published his findings in several treatises. Descartes incorporated his mechanical views on the human body (which were largely based on his own anatomical dissections) in his philos­ophy. In Descartes’ philosophy, the natural body that we experience as a unity of soul and body is resolved in the concept of the bête-machine, a philosophized body. The divisibility of the human body that he saw clearly demonstrated in a dissection, while the soul resisted any attempt at fragmentation or intellectual anatomizing, must have literally confronted Descartes with one of the major problems of his philosophical thinking, i.e. the dualism of body and soul.

            From 1600 onwards, scientific interest in the human body increased, and until 1800 the practice of anatomy flourished most of all in the Netherlands, as is reflected in the work of Ruysch, Albinus and Camper. In seventeenth-century anatomy new advancements took place after a period of consolidation that followed the great successes of Vesalius. This growing scientific interest in the human body is reflected in the arts and philosophy (cf. Sawday 1995, ch. 6). Important writers and thinkers, however, did not always adhere, as Descartes did, to a concept of philosophy that transcends or totally absorbs the body into thought. However, Kant's transcendental philosophy rendered untenable 17th- and 18th-century theories in which mind begins with body, such as Condillac's and Herder's (c.f. Zwijnenberg 1999b) or philosophies in which bodily based thought has (at least) a place, such as Descartes' (cf. Oksenberg Rorty 1992). Kant simply removed the natural body from philosophy. He confirmed once and for all the philosophical separation between bodies and ideas. A seperation that was begun by Descartes and later fiercly attacked by the materialists. With the advent of Kant, the welter of diverse and often conflicting concepts of the human body, that existed in the arts, literature and philosophy in the period from Descartes until Kant, seems to have lost its historical and philosophical significance as a formative factor in notions on the human body. This post-doctoral research project will therefore critically re-assess the complex relationship between philosophy, anatomy and the representa­tion of the human body in art and in anatomical drawings, in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.

The aim of this project is to address theoretical issues on the basis of historical data and analyses. Two theoretical venues will be pursued, A. an epistemological and B. an aesthetic:

A. Since its rebirth in the thirteenth century, anatomical dissection is firmly grounded in the philosophical tradition. The west­ern tradition of anatomy and medicine is characterized by a mixture of Galenic and Aristotelian ideas on scientific research and the acquisition of knowledge. Anatomists legitimized their dissection practice by referring to Aristotle's notion of the hand as instrument of instruments, as the mind is the form of forms (De Anima, 431b-432a), and they considered the dissection of the hand as the most important and beautiful dissection. On closer consideration, the practice of dissection can be considered an epistemological endeavor. Of course, the anatomical procedure of obtain­ing knowledge is quite different from philo­sophi­cal reasoning. However, epistemological issues, such as the rela­tionship between an empirical and a theoretical approach, between the senses and the world, and the hierarchy of the senses, inevitably arise during a dissection, when the anatom­ist cuts up the body to recover an order. Also active in a dissection are ontological notions concerning the status and essence of the human body. Furthermore, the new anatomical practice was formative to a new experience of (and relationship to) the body, of its interiority and its exteriority, and consequently, to new images and theoretical and philosophical knowledge of the body (Cf. Hillman and Mazzio 1997).

            In light of seventeenth and eight­eenth century philosophers' interest in the human body and anatomy, it is remarkable how little research has been dedicated to the relation­ship between anatomy and philosophy. In fact, a lit­erature search did not reveal any publication devoted to specific relationships between anatomy and philosophy in this period, except some scattered remarks in for instance Sawday (1995). This part of the project will attempt to fill this void by pursuing the following aims:

1. to map relationships between anatomy and develop­ments in seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy, and

2. to assess the contribution made by the culture of dissec­tion to the evolution of philosophical thought on the human body;

3. to discuss the implications of dissection to epistemological questions concerning sensory experience and ontological questions concerning the human body.

            This part of the project is a survey of the relationship between anatomy and philosophy. On the one hand, it is an evaluation of the relevance of ana­tomical experience to contemporary philosophical theories on visuality and touch, on knowledge of the body based on sensory perception and on the formation and representation of this knowledge. On the other hand, it will reveal the epistemological and ontological ideas operative in the practice of dissection. This part of the project is directly related to the aesthetic part.

B. The sensory experience obtained by the anatomist during a dissection needs to be recorded by a medium outside his/her mind, in order to become accessible knowledge that can be theorized, discussed and disseminated. Since the Renaissance, it is has proven to be impossible to develop comprehen­sible anatomical knowledge without the help of a medium, such as a drawing or print (cf. Zwijnenberg 1999a, Ch. 6). A drawing visualizes not only what an anatomist discovers in a cut-open body, using his scalpel and senses, but also reflects his theor­etical preconceptions. Apparently, anatomical reality becomes visible and knowable, and open to theorization, only through a drawing or print: anatomy, in other words, needs visual media­tion. In this part of the project anatomical represen­tations will be discussed from the points of view developed in part A. The anatomical drawing is not considered as just a result of a dissection, in which anatomical knowledge has been fixed. Rather, the anatomical drawing is considered both as a reflection of artistic, practical, theoretical and philosophical knowledge of the human body, and as an active force in the formation of new knowledge and artistic representations of the body. Whatever the body is thought or experienced to be, seems to be somehow present in anatomical drawings. This part of the project should lead to a better understanding of the role of a drawing in the formation of knowledge that is grounded in bodily and sensory experiences. Furthermore, it will discuss the relationship between medium, materials, working methods and meaning. And it will explore the integration of the artist's sensory perception and experience into the anatomical drawing, as well as the bodily and intellectual re-enactment of this experience by the beholder. In combination, part A and B will cover issues such as the ontological and epistemological primacy of the human body, the differences and resemblances between the philosophical/theoretical body, the anatomical/medical body and the body of subjective and artistic experience, and the possibility of experiencing and knowing a body outside the process of mediation. The epistemological and aesthetic venue of this project will lead to a comprehensive understanding of a central issue of the research program, i.e. the interrelation between five essential aspects of mediation (knowledge formation, representational conventions, technological intervention, cultural dissemination and subjective experience), in the formative years of anatomical science. In the project an idea-historical approach is combined with an aesthetic approach based on phenomenological notions concerning the ontological and epistemological primacy of the human body.

Project planning

The research project is subdivided into three parts. The result of each part will be submitted as one or more articles to international jour­nals. The advantage of this approach is that every stage addresses a limited and surveyable part of the project. Moreover, this phasing will facilitate the exchange of results with the other projects of this pro­gram. In all phases of the project, the tension between an historical analysis and a philosophical interpretation of historical data will be critically acknowledged.

 

Phase 1: 18 months, 0.75fte.

To understand the interdependence of anatomy and philosophy from Descartes until Kant, it is necessary to put together a gen­eral survey of the period, in addition to a more detailed study on important philosophers and movements, to substantiate general claims about this interdependence drawn from the survey. This entails a study of secondary literature on the history of philosophy and anatomy, as well as a new reading (from the perspective of this project) of primary sources. The aim of this phase is to produce: a. one survey article in which authors are discussed who are important (but perhaps as of yet neglected in secondary literature) to understand the interdependence. The article must seek to demonstrate that anatomy can be considered as a revealing, but (of course) not fully explanatory context of seventeenth and eighteenth cen­tury philosophy. b. one or more articles that are more limited and detailed in nature, for instance a more in depth study dedicated to an author ‘discovered’ in the historical survey.

 

Phase 2: 15 months, 0.75 fte.

In this phase the epistemological, ontological and aesthetic questions concerning and active in the practice of dissection and the representation of anatomical findings will be discussed, based on the inventory of phase 1. This will be the starting point to address important issues such as the ontological and epistemological primacy of the human body; the differences and resemblances between the philosophical/theoretical body, the anatomical/medical body, and the body of subjective and artistic experience; and the possibility of experiencing and knowing a body outside the process of mediation. In other words, an histori­cal investigation into the neglected relationship between anatomy and philosophy in the period between Descartes until Kant will provide a new vocabulary to re-think old problems on human body. The results of this phase will be published in one or more academic articles.

 

Phase 3: 15 months, 0.75 fte.

This phase is a case study to a drawing of a dissection of a hand by Bidloo - De Laraisse (Anatomia humani corporis - 1685, tabula 70). Bidloo and Laraisse chose an innovative approach, rethinking from actual dissection how to show the body not diagrammatically but naturalistically. The drawings betray a complex and somewhat puzzling interaction between anatomist and artist; while Bidloo took care of the actual dissection, he left it to De Laraisse to draw ‘realistic’ repre­sentations of bodily parts, without exercising sufficiently close supervision. The unique collaboration between anatomist and artist, in addition to their innovative approach, should make this work eminently suitable to discuss the questions proposed in the project. The drawing will be studied from the theoretical perspective developed in phase 2. This case study has a two-fold objective. The results of phase 1 and 2 will be applied and tested out in an effort to see anatomical drawing in a different light. And the case study will be employed to refine and adjust the insights of phase 1 and 2. Eventually, this should result in one or more articles that will answer the questions of the aesthetic part of this project. The case study is the basis for the develop­ment of ontological, epistemological and aesthetic notions with regard to the mediation of the human body in a drawing. In addition, the connection between the aesthetic and scien­tific aspects of the drawing will be discussed. This case study, therefore, will be a counterpart of the case studies in the other projects of this NWO-program. The results of this case study will critically inform the modern case studies and vice versa.

Motivering keuze voorgestelde uitvoerder

 

The proposed research project is highly interdisciplinary. It is predicated on a solid knowledge of the philosophies and developments in art and anatomy of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, as well as of the history of ideas and aesthetics. Besides, it requires analytical skills and a high degree of systematical insight. The aim of the project is the development of new theoretical insights in the field of epistemology and aesthetics, based on historical analyses and interpretation. As such it is clearly a post-doctoral project. It requires a scholar who can creatively and independently use the results of her/his research for the development and articulation of new theoretical angles.

The project has been discussed with dr. A. Cunningham (Cambridge) and dr. J.V. Hansen (USA). Each has indicated his or her willingness to participate in this post-doc project and to take part in its joint supervision. Their cooperation in this project will make it possible to develop it internationally.

PROJECT 2: DEPICTING SKIN (oio, 1 fte)

 

Project description

This Ph.D project focuses on anatomical illustrations of the skin between 1770 and 1890. It addresses the theme of mediation in a twofold way. First, it examines how new technical means affect the form, dissemination and meaning of a traditional genre: the anatomical illustration. Second, it focuses on the skin, as the bodily mediator par excellence, and examines how the interpretation and meaning of skin is subject to historical change. The aim of this research project is to examine changes in the depiction of skin in anatomical illustrations during the period 1770-1890 in relation to their cultural meaning and in connection with new technologies for investigation and dissemination, such as the microscope, the lithograph and photography.

The skin is a fascinating object, as it repre­sents the edge of anatomical research (Elkins 1999). A dissection begins with the cutting of the skin. The skin has to be laid open, as the word ‘anatemnein’ literally refers to, and as such it establishes the boundary between inside and outside. Tradi­tionally, physicians regarded the skin as a mirror of the interior body. The skin mediates between the interior of the body and its environment. The skin houses the medium of touch. Touch enables us to feel our environment, but the skin also allows to feel oneself. As a rule, intimate contacts seduce to touch the other person’s skin. The anatomy of the skin may inform our knowledge of the sense of touch, and our understand­ing of the relation­ship between inside or outside. A comprehen­sive cultural history of the skin has yet to be written. One of  the aims of this project is to contribute to a cultural history of skin, from a rather limited and focused point of view: the study of anatomical illustrations.

Martin Kemp (1993) observes that historical studies of anatomical representation traditionally concentrate on ‘what’, without paying attention to the questions ‘how’ and ‘why’. Kemp argues for a revised agenda for the study of the history of anatomi­cal illustration. The goal of this research project is to contribute to a theory of the mediated body, focusing on the relation­ships between speci­fic ways of anatomical illustration, the selection of depicted subjects, the methodical handling of the subjects drawn, and the aims of the illustrator.

            The research project will focus on anatomical illustra­tion between 1770-1890, a period characterized by changing attitudes towards, or perhaps even changing paradigms in, natural history and medicine, such as the (highly dis­puted) ‘end of natural history’ (Lepenies 1976), the naissance of ‘a clinical gaze’ (Foucault 1963), the changing rela­tionship between anatomy and physiology in medicine (Coleman and Holmes 1988; Wachelder 1992), or the birth of a new ‘observer’ (Crary 1990, Wachelder 1998 and 2000). Two tandem developments are noticeable: the (re)introduction of new medical techniques and representational techniques. The microscope, which had lost much of its meaning as a research-instrument during the eight­eenth century (Ruestow 1996; Fournier 1996; Wilson 1995), experienced an important technical and intellectual revival in the 1840s, as it gave an enormous impetus to (pathological) anatomy. Around the same time, photography emerged as a new means of recording visual appearances. The introduc­tion of lithography, around 1800, gradually replaced engravings. The project examines the effects and interplay of new technical means for research and the representation and dissemination of knowledge, in order to enhance our understanding of the mediation of the human body.

Each illustrator in the field of natural history or anatomy has to steer a middle ground between picturing nature—delivering a truthful, naturalistic image—and picturing knowledge—rendering an insightful representation of the object under study. Naturalistic illustrations always show signs of implicit ideas concerning the depicted object (Blum 1993), whereas diagrams use likeness to express knowl­edge and abstracted ideas (Baigrie 1996). The tension between the different ends of picturing nature vis-à-vis picturing knowledge has been adequately studied as far as the Renaissance period and the eighteenth century are concerned. Extending this type of research into the nineteenth century is interesting for more than one reason. In the second part of the eighteenth century anatomists advocated an utmost realism in anatomical illustration; in the words of William Hunter’s Anatomia Uteri Humani Gravidi (1774) only utmost realism carried ‘the mark of truth’. The presumed independence of realistic images from any visual convention led Hunter to prefer those over diagrammatic modes of illus­tration. They offer science a ‘universal language’ and convey to the viewer an ‘immediate [i.e. unmediated] comprehension of what it represents.’ (Lomas 1993, p. 6) An important change in the study of nature occurs around 1800. New printing tech­niques (lithography), a revival of the microscope as a research instrument, and, in the 1840s, photography emerged as a new technique of recording visual appearances.

            Changing practices and methods in anatomical illustration can be particularly specified in the changing depictions of skin. Symbolic and medical meanings of skin significantly changed between 1770 and 1890. Duden’s (1987) description of the skin in mid-eighteenth century culture and popular medi­cine suggests a porous cover allowing the emanation of bodily fluids; that skin may open spontaneously (wounds, lumps, or tears) or may be forced open (e.g. by bloodletting). In the nineteenth century, seclusion became a significant function of skin. Prominent sociologists as Norbert Elias point to chang­ing attitudes towards sociability, intimacy, and shame in the period under study. The skin is important for the process of individuation. In the nineteenth century, physiological research reshaped the skin into a complex organ, housing not only the sense of touch, but also the sense and mechanism of temperature control, the sense of pain etc. The sense of touch included receptors for touch, pressure and vibration.

            Significantly, the skin has always been a readable surface. Physicians regarded the skin as a mirror of the interior body, an important diagnostic (and therefore therapeuti­c) medium. In artistic painting it was long acknowledged that the skin was a readable surface par excellence. The human nude had inspired artists from antiquity on. Only real masters were able to paint skin in a persuasive way. The specific ways in which masters blended their pigments to paint skin were regarded valuable recipes. Even specific terms were invented to denote the colour or paint of flesh: membrana or carnatura. A remarkable encounter between the domains of medicine and the arts may be found around 1800 in physiognomy, the reading of the visual appearance of the face (its form, colour, etc.). Interestingly, for physiognomists, art became a branch of medical science (Jordanova 1993). In England, Charles Bell's Essays on the anatomy of the express­ion in painting (London, 1806) became very popular. Obviously, anatomical illustration is not drawing life but drawing death. Yet to understand anatomical illustrations of skin, the artis­tic tradition of painting skin is indispensable. An interest­ing question is whether the relatively cheap and popular tech­nique of lithography added a new dimension to the skin as a readable surface. When, why and how were hygienic books pub­lished, with relatively cheap full colour lithographs, inform­ing the public about health and illnesses and showing mothers the symptoms of children's diseases on the skin, such as measles and mumps?

            In sum, the research project entails five concrete research aims:

1. A description of changing pictorial ‘styles’ in the ana­tomical depiction of skin between 1770 and 1890.

2. An analysis of changing pictorial styles in relation to changes in medical knowledge, hygienic practices, illustration techniques, research instruments, and a historical-sociologi­cal analysis of changing patterns of intimacy and the public.

3. An analysis of the changing relationship between diagram­matic and naturalistic ways of depiction, in relation to technical means (lithography, microscope, photography)

4. An interdisciplinary analysis of the changing meanings of the skin as a mediator between the inside and outside of the human body.

5. A philosophical analysis of  the changing cultural meaning of skin as a direct bodily mediator in its relationship to changing mediating technologies, with respect to scien­tific illustration (representation), knowl­edge production (investigation), and dissemination.

Because of the interdisciplinary focus of the research pro­ject, knowledge of fundamental texts on anatomical representation in the areas of philosophy, art-history, soci­ology, and medical history will be crucial. The idea-historical and historical-social frameworks from which the illustrations originated, need to be taken into account as well. The aim is a contextual history of the depiction of skin, paying atten­tion to the multifaceted and multi-layered meanings that are attributed to skin.

Project Planning

 

This Ph.D. project will take a total of four years, and will include the study of secondary sources from various disci­plines such as philosophy, art history, sociology, and medical his­tory. The aim is a contextual history of the depiction of skin, paying atten­tion to the multifaceted and multi-layered meanings that are attributed to skin. The project will trace in detail the effects of three new techniques: lithography, the microscope, and photography. Each technique prompts a specific hypothesis:

1. The advent of lithography and its effect on the representa­tion of skin. A comparison will be made between (sometimes hand-coloured) engravings and lithographic prints regarding their visual qualities, subjects and range of distribution. Of particular interest will be anatomi­cal atlases in more edi­tions, one with engravings and the other with lithographs, e.g. Paolo Mascagni's Planches anatomiques du corps humain (1823-1826). Presumably, lithography greatly encouraged the medical reading of skin by non-professionals.

2. The advance of the microscope in the 1840s as a research tool in pathological anatomy is often interpreted as part of the increasing importance of physiology (to the detriment of anatomy) for medicine in the nineteenth century. Did this shift to physiology lead to a diagrammatic way of depicting skin? The question at stake here is whether the upgrading of physiology with its emphasis on function rather than structure, furthered a dia­grammatic way of depicting.

3. Photography developed at the intersection of science and popular culture. Photographs of skin, used in medicine and in popular culture, propelled different pictorial codes. Did medical pho­tography focus on details of specific individuals, whereas in popular photography stereotypes and global impressions became important? Photography offers an interesting test case for macro-sociological theories concerning the skin as a symbol for emerging notions of privacy and public life.

Primary sources for this research-project are anatomical atlases, medical manuals and hygiene books from the 1770's until the end of the nineteenth century from Dutch, French and English sources. For the study of medical photographs, the recently (re)discovered collection (some 25,000 items) of the Universi­teitsmuseum Utrecht (Rooseboom 2000) will be consulted.

The provisional itinerary of the project will be as follows

 

First year: Analysis of various secondary sources; defining theoretical perspectives. Participating in regular sessions of the WTMC-graduate school. Getting acquainted with primary sources. Refining research theses in conjunction with projects 1, 3 and 4. Participating in regular sessions of the WTMC-grad­uate school, local seminars.

 

Second year: Close analysis of primary sources with emphasis on the introduction and dissemination of lithography. Reading of secondary sources. Inventory of primary sources with regard to the introduction and dissemination of microscopy. Reading of secondary sources. Participating in regular sessions of the WTMC-grad­uate school, local seminars

 

Third year: Studying primary sources with special interest for the introduction and dissemination of photography. Reading of secondary sources. Processing results and writing dissertation; constant consultation and feedback from researchers working on projects 1, 3 and 4.

 

Fourth year: Writing dissertation; constant consultation and feedback from researchers working on projects 1, 3 and 4.

Motivering keuze aanvrager

The proposed research project combines perspec­tives from science studies, philosophy, art history and sociology. It is a challenging and ambitious project. However, as turns out from the program description, the listing of the main goals, and project planning, it is clearly suitable for a research assistant/OIO. It requires a student trained and interested in interdisciplinary work.

PROJECT 3: ULTRASOUND, ENDOSCOPY AND THE VISUALIZATION OF THE HUMAN BODY (oio, 1 fte)

 

Project description

Ever since the discovery of X-rays in 1896, imaging technologies have become crucial instruments in everyday medical practice: they visualize the insides of a living human body without having to substantially damage its skin. Ultrasound, endoscopy, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computerized tomography (CT), positron emission tomography (PET) and related technologies have become indispensable tools in contemporary medicine, where they are both deployed for diagnostic purposes and for surgical navigation. Beyond the obvious clinical results of the use of these imaging technologies, an important philosophical question arises. If we take serious the program’s conjecture that visualizations of the body, and the technologies with which body images are produced, are no transparent intermediaries between knowledge and reality, but that they mediate and therefore transform knowledge and the object of knowledge, then we must ask the following questions. 1. How are readable images (i.c. endoscopic and ultrasound images) constituted in the clinic? 2. How do medical imaging technologies, and the images they produce in the clinic, affect the human body both as a (professional, personal and cultural) object of visualization and as an entity that is experienced subjectively?

Ad. 1. Far from being simple depictions of a given body, medical images are produced in clinical settings, by technologies that already carry specific historical and cultural trajectories. Institutional contexts, the histories and cultural images of the technologies, as well as the intellectual, tactile and technical knowledge of clinicians, all contribute to the ways in which medical images depict a body and to the specific ways in which they are read. Every new imaging technology requires new interpretative frames, new ways of matching bodies with the imaging apparatus, new reading and cognitive skills to be developed. Images do not contain implicit meanings that radiologists must "learn to decode," as historians of medical imaging technologies have often assumed (Brecher & Brecher 1969, Kevles 1997). The readability of endoscopic or ultrasound images is a hermeneutic process, resulting from the intricate work of disciplining and codifying bodies, apparatuses, specialist and lay skills, and institutional protocols. A precise analysis of this complex web of disciplining forces within which images of the body are produced and which informs their eventual reading, will be the project’s first theoretical challenge. (cf. Pasveer, 1992; Lerner, 1992).

Ad. 2. Endoscopic or ultrasound images signify a body both as an object of medical knowledge, and as a subject of the patient’s personal experience. An ultrasound picture signifies something profoundly different in the perception and experience of a pregnant woman than in that of the gynecologist. Somehow the same image mediates two different (perceptions of) bodies because the visualization process follows partially different trajectories, each inscribed with its own mediations and transformations. At the point of the actual production of an image, the body as object of the gaze may prevail both for clinician and for patient. For the patient, though, the image necessarily also informs her perception/experience of a body. As a result, the double mediation of the body as subject and object prompts a philosophical reflexivity that has not been theorized so far, and which is not sufficiently explicable in terms of the subjective experience of one’s own interior body image, or exclusively in terms of psychological effects.

            Although this project aims at theorizing the medico-visual mediation of the body in general, it will narrow down its scope to two imaging technologies in particular: ultrasound and endoscopy. Ultrasound has its roots in the physics of sound; the apparatus registers stronger and weaker echoes coming from diffuse spaces between internal organs, and records them in subtle shades of gray. (cf. McNay and Fleming, 1999). The technique itself is known as non-invasive—no need to damage skin to obtain an image; and diagnostic—an image may inform a therapeutic trajectory, but in itself it only contributes to the establishment of a diagnostic judgement. Video-endoscopy provides rather different images than ultrasound: interior cavities or organs are recorded on video by bringing a mini-camera into the body through a tube, which has been inserted via a natural or artificial opening. Video and computer-assisted endoscopy is more than a medium for the observation and detection of pathologies (tumors, cystes, stones): the techniques enable the surgeon to operate directly inside a body without necessarily having to make a large incision in the skin. (Lauridsen, 1998) We have chosen to focus on ultrasound and endoscopy for specific reasons. Most importantly, both procedures allow patients to watch (moving) images of their own interior and hence fit the project’s aim of theorizing the mediated body as an object of knowledge and as a subject of experience. Moreover, both ultrasound and endoscopy operate within the realistic trope of ‘live television,’ implying a strong tendency to read the resulting images as unmediated representations of  ‘reality.’ The confrontation of a patient’s realistic reading with a clinician’s interpretation yields above formulated questions of embodied subject versus medical object. These two imaging technologies are case studies: the project aims at a philosophical analysis of mediation in the context of medical imaging technologies in the clinic.

            Although medical imaging techniques increasingly define the way we perceive, understand, treat and have/are the human body, little philosophical research has been dedicated to the topic of seeing and representing the body's interior, as it is related to the modern high-tech medical setting. There is a fair amount of research in the history of medicine concerning the introduction of new visualizing instruments, particularly on the development of X-rays in the nineteenth and early twentieth century (Pasveer 1989; Lerner 1992, Bynum 1997; Reiser 1978). From a (social) constructivist angle, Pasveer (1989) and Blume (1992) have theorized the various aspects of the relationship between visualizing technol­ogy, medical diagnosis, professionalization, and its effect on clinical practices. Cartwright (1995) and Holtzmann-Kevles (1997) have explored the interrelations between medical and cultural practices resulting from the introduction of new imaging technologies.

            With regard to specific theories on ultrasound and endoscopy, most researchers adopt an anthropological or sociological perspective. Taylor (1996) and Price (1996) argue that the use of ultrasound in a birth clinic significantly affects how women see their fetuses, and how they adjust their behavior and apprehension vis-à-vis their pregnancy. Various cultural critics have analyzed how ultrasound images have modified the representation of the fetus in Western culture (Cf. Petchesky 1987; Duden 1993). The nature and significance of the endoscopic gaze has hardly been a subject of serious investigation. Shohat (1998), in a limited research project, examines how endometriosis patients retrospectively watched endoscopic videos of their own surgery, which helped them understand and cope with their disease. Van Dijck (2000; forthcoming) argues that the various levels of mediation (social, cultural, psychological) are inextricably intertwined in the signification process. What is lacking in these studies, is a system­atic philosophical reflection on the meaning of (endoscopic and ultrasound) images for the representation, perception, and experience of the body’s interior.

We propose two major methodological venues to tackle the research questions. For a theoretically informed analysis of the institutional context in which images are produced, the researcher will have to use methodologies common in the anthropology of science. (cf. Latour, 1998; Hirschauer, 1991; Lynch and Woolgar 1985) Thus she will have to observe a series of image-making sessions in the clinic and analyze how the different participants interrelate when they produce such images. A (radically) constructivist approach departs from analyses of the mediated nature of embodiment. The philosophico-empirical approach, holds that techniques ‘modify the matter of our expression, not only its form’ (Latour, 1994: 38). A constructivist analysis focuses on the reconstruction of the collectives of people and machines within which the body is visually mediated. It holds that mediations always imply transformations of all participants to the collective: of their goals, their characteristics, their competencies. This approach requires the researcher to anthropologically observe the constitution of collectives within which bodies are (visually) mediated. Rather than privileging human interpretations of what happens to (their) bodies, the focus will be on processes of mediation/translation. (For examples of constructivist inspired work on mediation, see Latour 1993; Coopmans 2000; Cussins 1999; Hirschauer 1991; Akrich & Pasveer 1996, forthcoming; Hutchins 1995; Rabeharisoa & Callon, forthcoming).

The second, (post-)phenomenological approach focuses on processes of perception and interpretation of patients and doctors: how are their perceptions of the body as object and subject of knowledge and experience (in)formed by the visual mediations the(ir) body is subjected to? Methodologically, this approach requires the researcher to have access to people’s perceptions and interpretations of medical imaging technologies, either during or after the imaging process. The researcher will have to study imaging practices in detail, and on the basis thereof, interview patients and clinicians as to their experiences of the bodies visualized. (For examples of phenomenologically inspired work on (medical) technology, see Ihde 1996; Verbeek 1999; Dipert 1993). Together, these methodological and theoretical venues will lead to a description of how the ‘apparatus’ produces readable images, how this apparatus and its constituent parts are informed by their specific historical and cultural roots, and how they inform the various interpretative trajectories of patients and doctors.

Project Planning

 

Year one: Start with three literatures: history of the technologies (key journals); philosophies of phenomenological and constructivist. Establishing contacts at clinical research sites. Participate in graduate seminars of the WTMC perspectives of embodiment; methodology of theoretically informed empirical (anthropological) research graduate school, participate in local seminars organized by the group.

 

Year two: Finishing histories of the technologies based on study of key journals. Observation of image-making procedures (research question 1). Writing of chapters on endoscopy and ultrasound. Preparing second research question: further reading. Participate in graduate seminars of the WTMC graduate school, participate in local seminars organized by the group.

 

Year three: Operationalization of second research question. Processing data from observations and interviews. First outlines of chapters. Participate in local seminars.

 

Year four: Writing of dissertation.

 

During the first two years, The PhD student will participate in the graduate-program of the WTMC graduate school. Sciences Institute, University Hospital Utrecht.

PROJECT 4: MIRRORING THE INTERIOR BODY

Contemporary art, medical imaging and philosophical concepts of subjective embodiment

(0.6 fte, post-doc)

 

Project description

Project 4 focuses on the aesthetically mediated body by exploring the use of medical visualization techniques, such as X-ray, ultrasound, and endoscopy, in contemporary art. It will compare the artistic articulation of experiences of embodiment and subjectivity through medical imagery with general reflections on the body and aesthetics as developed in contemporary French philosophy. The central questions of this project are: What can art works deploying medical imaging technology or imagery teach us about the way we experience subjective embodiment? What do they tell us about the mediation of the body? How should these experiences be conceptualized philosophically?

            Traditional philosophical conceptions commonly figure the internal body—particularly one’s own interior body—as a dark continent. The body was part of impenetrable Nature resisting the self-clarifying power of Reason; it could be subjectively felt but it could never be subjective­ly seen. What could be seen was the interior body as an object, because if a body could be internally inspected it was always someone else’s body—and before X-ray photography this body was usually a corpse. When philosophers, in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth century, began to question the supposed self-transparency of the rational subject, one's own internal body remained an invisible entity. It was a source of abilities and deficiencies, needs and satisfactions, desires and fulfillment, always eluding regimentation because always escaping the Other's gaze. The unseen interior body accounted not only for the subject's finitude and existential Geworfenheit, but also for its capacities to transgress and liberate.

            Twentieth-century French thought can be seen as a critique of the metaphysical tradition that determines subjectivity according to the privilege of sight, and this critique implies a distrust of visuality (e.g. Jay 1993). An urgent question arising here is whether this kind of critique accounts for the potential of imaging techniques to see one’s own interior body. Do new technical possibilities prompt yet another philosophical conception of subjective embodiment, beyond phenomenology and post-structuralism? When for instance Merleau-Ponty in his later work argues that seeing gives us the closest possible insight in the nature of our belonging to the world, he refers to the fact that there is always a remnant of invisibility in the visible. While seeing itself seeing, the body is never transparent to itself. This opacity renders the body a thing among things, caught in the fabric of the world. What would be the consequences for Merleau-Ponty's ontology when, in seeing itself seeing, the body would be—or think to be—transparent to itself? The same question may be posed with regard to philosophies that hail the body's capacities for resisting he power mechanisms of an overwhelming symbolic order (Oosterling 1989). Following Foucault's discussion of the Panopticon, we may argue that if the disciplining and normalizing function of the gaze depends on the subject's internalization of its surveillance, it will be obstructed by what the subject cannot see himself. But what will happen when medical gazes not only penetrate people’s skin but when this gaze into the body can also be shared by the subject of introspection?

            However, as is pointed out in project 3, it would be a simplification to understand the consequences of body imaging for conceptions of subjective embodiment in terms of opacity vis-a-vis transparency. In the first place, medical images as X-ray or ultra-sound images are hard to read and often ambiguous in what they show: their supposed transpar­ency results from a process of representation, interpretation and negotiation in which doctor, patient, instrument and setting each play a constitutive part. Moreover, we encounter those images only intermittently, in specific circumstances and (commonly medical) settings. Therefore, although they can be understood as visual recordings of what is usually invisible to ourselves, they will not be as easily experienced as continuous with our bodies. On the contrary, modern representational techniques seem to create a discord between what is seen and what is felt, between vision and feeling. Lüdeking (1996) compares the feeling these images evoke with the initial feelings of incoherence and irritation a person experiences when confronted with snap shots or video images of oneself, or tape recordings of one's voice. Incoherence and irritation diminish when one becomes used to these 'duplications', but they return as soon as one encounters new kinds of images derived from feelings rather than observation. The image of our own body, and hence our identity thus changes constantly. This change in the relation to our own body, however, is not purely individual. We have learned to interpret these images because they have been disseminated into other cultural domains than the medical one. These considerations suggest that even what is most intimately and directly experienced--one's own body—is thoroughly mediated; medical imaging technologies do not only determine the portrayal of man within medical science, but also have a profound impact on experiences and conceptions of subjective embodiment outside of clinical settings. This impact, however, is hardly accounted for in contemporary philosophy.

            To investigate the possible consequences of medical visual technology for experiences of subjective embodiment in contemporary culture, it is helpful to look at art. In the context of the renewed interest in the body and its visual representation from the late 1980s on, the artistic exploration of medical visual technology of all kinds and its impact on the experience of embodiment has grown into a modest trend. A number of artists (e.g. Zoe Leonards, Kiki Smith, Cindy Sherman, Ian Breakwell, Mike Kelley, Helen Chadwick, Mona Hatoum, Christine Borland, Stansfield & Hooykaas, or Richard Kriesche) use medical images and visual implements as divers as anatomical dolls, X-rays, CAT scans, electro-encephalograms, and endoscopic video images. There have been exhibitions devoted to the topic of the links between art and medical imagery, such as The Quick and the Dead: Artists and Anatomy (Hayward Gallery, 1997) and the project Art and Brain, initiated in 1994 in research center Jülich by brain specialist Ernst Pöppel and curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Although these artists use medical imagery for various reasons, their works often allude to philosophical questions, such as those concerning the boundaries between subject and object, self and other, organism and technology, vision and the other senses.

The systematic comparison between artistic uses of medical visualization techniques and their clinical uses might throw unex­pected light on both. The erotic beauty of body details that is an evident feature of Mona Hatoum's installation Corps étranger, for instance, might point to the absence of such aesthetic aspects in clinical situ­ations, but also to their unexpected appearance in settings where they are out of place. The awkward intimacy created by the dark and narrow installation space and by the sound of the artist's heart beat and breathing highlights to what extent in the clinical setting the staging of the apparatus and of the mutual behavior of doctor and patient are aimed at averting the immanent awkwardness and intimacy of the situation. Works like Hatoum's foreground the experiential and aesthetic aspects of medical visualization technologies by transposing them into an artistic context. They allow us to explore the impact of these technologies on the mediation of the body by making palpable the shift in experiences and conceptions of subjective embodiment they invoke. A comparison between the use of medical images in the context of these artistic settings and in clinical settings, as examined in project 3, will demonstrate the significance of different institutional practices with respect to the question of mediation.

Project 4 will investigate works of art employing medical visualization techniques such as X-ray, ultrasound and endoscopy. After an inventorying survey (in co-operation with Dr. van Rijsingen), a few exemplary works will be selected for a thorough iconographical, semiotic and phenomenological analysis and interpretation. The works of art will be considered against the background of the theoretical framework of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and its "postmodernist" reception. Merleau-Ponty's theory of subjective embodiment is compared to and contrasted with a selection of texts by Lacan, Foucault, Butler, Nancy and Derrida who have thoroughly influenced postmodern phenomenology and who also intimately connect visuality, subjectivity and embodiment. The aim of the project is twofold: on the one hand it investigates contemporary works of art from a phenomenological point of view, and on the other, it explores in which way these works of art ask for a reformulation of phenomenological philosophy.

            This project is a continuation of the Ph.D. research on Merleau-Ponty's aesthetics in relation to other French thinkers carried out by  Jenny Slatman at the University of Amsterdam (Slatman 1996, 1997, 2000 and forthcoming). Related art historical research is currently developed and will be executed by dr. Van Rijsingen (University of Amsterdam) under the title of Matter and Media: Artistic Visualisation of the Interior Body. The selection of art works in this project will be executed in collaboration with Van Rijsingen.

Project planning

Project 4 will take four years 0,6 fte. Throughout this period, the activities include international research and attending (international) expositions.

 

Year one:

In the first year both the practical and theoretical field of research have to be marked off, implying a) a survey of art works using medical imagery of the interior body, and b) the determination of the theoretical framework by analyzing the work of Merleau-Ponty in relation to the work of Lacan, Derrida, Butler, Foucault and Nancy. This part of the research should result in a) a selection of works of art to be analyzed (at this point we will benefit from the co-operation with Dr. van Rijsingen, who explores artistic visualization of the interior body from an art historical perspective), and b) preliminary drafts of articles.

 

Year two:

Prolongation of the theoretical research of the first year, resulting in the publication of one or more articles in an international philosophical journal. Start with iconographical, semiotic and phenomenological analysis and interpretation of the selection of the works of art made in the first year. The analysis will be of original works; for works that are not in public collections, the artists will be approached. Part of the research will be conducted at the Two10 Gallery of The Welcome Trust in London, an art gallery focusing entirely on the relationship between medical science and contemporary art.

 

Year Three:

Description, analysis and interpretation of a selection of examples. This part of the research should result in the publication of an article in an international art historical or art philosophical journal. In co-operation with Dr. van Rijsingen, this part of the project will be concluded with the organization of an exhibition of the selection of works, together with the publication of a catalogue, including theoretical texts.

 

Year Four:

The last part of the project consist of a return from the analyses of the works of art to the theoretical framework. This theoretical reflection results in the publication in one or more articles in an international philosophical or interdisciplinary journal.

PROJECT 5: TOWARDS A THEORY OF THE MEDIATED BODY (0,4 fte senior researcher)

 

Project description

Project 5 is a synthesizing project aimed at formulating a multi-layered theory of the mediated body.  It will be devoted to a comparative analysis of the theoretical approaches that are used in the four other projects. Its central questions are: What does it mean, philosophically, to regard the body as historically mediated? What requirements should be met by a theory of mediation?

The central assumption of the program as a whole is that the human body is historically me­diated, that it is not a naturally given, fixed, and self-sufficient entity, but that is affected by histori­cal change and responding to its scientific, technological, social and cultural context. Yet the program remains (deliberately) ambiguous in its definition of mediation. Sometimes we speak about the body as being mediated in a sense in which the body, as an unknown but necessary an sich, can still be distinguished from the sum total of its possible mediations. What we view as being mediated is not the body itself, but rather the knowledge or ex­perience or feeling we have of it and that is constructed through mediating agencies.  But at other points in the program, the body is spoken of as being no more and no less than its mediations, actual or possible. In this conception of mediation the body ‘itself’ is regarded as subject to continuous transformation, leaving no residue of unmediated physicality. The refusal to choose between those two philosophical options allows for indispensable theoretical latitude in the program. It enables us to include approaches such as phenomenology and construction­ism that may have a lot to contribute to each other as long as this bone of contention is passed over. Yet the first task of the fifth project is to make the ambiguity explicit, and to clarify and examine its consequences.      

The ambiguous use of the concept of mediation in this program is further complicated because the object of mediation, the body, is also ambiguous, although in a different way. The body figures alternately as object and subject of the practices we study, and sometimes it functions concurrently as object and subject. As indicated in the proposal for project 1, the anatomist’s hand was considered a major instrument for obtaining knowledge in the practice of dissection from the thirteenth century onward, involving him (or her) physically with the body examined. This reflexivity of the sub­ject/object relation is nicely expressed in the privileged status of the dissection of the hand as the most important and beautiful dissection. In recent times, the body’s reflexivity has become even more com­plex. A major historical transition traced by the program is that between the times in which the body as object of research was necessarily dead and recent developments allowing the investigation of liv­ing bodies. These developments have turned the object of research into a potential witness of its own insides – into a subject as well. A question arising, then, is whether and to what extent the body that is visualized and discussed by the medical experts and the body that is seen and felt by the patient is still one and the same thing. As is indicated in the proposal for project 3, the same ultrasound picture may have different meanings to a gynecologist and to a pregnant woman, visualizing the body as an object for both, but for the patient also informing her experience of her own body. So the question what it means to consider a reality as mediated might require a specific answer in case this reality is a body – something we are as much as something we have.

A third complication arises from the fact that we deal with the interior body and its boundaries and the way in which they are mediated in the history of their medical and artistic visuali­zation. Because of the body’s particular subject/object structure, the proprioceptive experience of the inner body and its boundaries offers us the closest possible exam­ple of immediacy. Nothing seems as private, as directly accessible, as the pre-reflective experience of inward bodily sensations such as pain. The history of the scientific and artistic ‘opening up’ of the body, however, imposes the question whether and to what extent this region of interior, immediate experience may historically have shifted its boundaries. In project 2 the question is addressed to what extent the meaning of the skin – as a direct mediator between inside and outside – changes during the nineteenth century as a result of the interplay between cultural meanings, popular knowl­edge, technical means and scientific insights. In project 3 the question arises to what extent, for a pregnant woman, an ul­trasound picture will transform an internal, immediate experience into an external and mediated one. Her earlier awareness of her pregnancy was already mediated: the public availability of ultrasound pictures allowed the woman to form mental pictures of her fetus. Still, the actual situation of being visualized from the inside out makes an experiential difference for the individual involved.

However, the latter example already indicates a fourth ambiguity, that of the body as both intimate and strange. We might be tempted to equate the immediately felt experience of our own bodies with selfhood, as we tend to do in the example mentioned above.  Yet a direct feeling such as pain may estrange us from our bodies, rendering the body into something with an inscrutable and hostile logic of its own, whereas a visually mediated knowledge of its source may (but of course not always does) reconcile body and self. Here we encounter a rationale for the traditional, Cartesian and Kantian, identification of subjec­tivity with the self-transparent, knowing mind as opposed to the body as opaque matter. As the intro­duction to project 1 points out, this program seeks to modify the Kantian legacy in several ways. Yet it would be too simple to reverse the opposition and turn the body into the primary ‘source of the self’. It is precisely by foregrounding mediation and by comparing its various historical and cultural forms, that we might be able to show how distinctions between self and other are shifting constructions cutting across physical boundaries between the body and its environment.  That is why, throughout the program, medical imaging techniques are not only considered as investiga­tion devices producing knowledge, but are also examined in their quality of artistic tools producing aesthetic effects. Project 4 in particular will elucidate how experiences of subjectivity and embodi­ment are generated, reflected upon, and transformed in contemporary art using medical imaging tech­nologies. It will relate these experiments to contemporary French philosophy in which bodily inten­tionality is often valued precisely for its differential impact vis-à-vis the supposed totalitarianism of identifying reason.

The development of a theory of the mediated body calls for an idea-historical and systematic study of the concept of mediation focusing on the ambiguities listed above. In addition, it re­quires reflection on the relation of various possible agencies involved in the mediation of the body.  Whereas traditional idealist philosophies, classical phenomenology included, regarded mediation as consisting in conceptual determination, the linguistic turn of the twentieth century replaced conceptual with textual or discursive mediation. However, in this program visual images, instruments of different kinds, and social interactions, may all function as mediating agencies—we do not presume they operate as ‘texts in disguise.’ Therefore, as has been outlined in the general introduction, a theory of the mediated body should combine several, inter­related levels of historical and systematic investigation. Besides a discursive level dealing with the interaction of ideas, texts and visual representations, a sociological level is required focusing on insti­tutional conditions and interactions between agencies – both human and non-human; and a phenome­nological level, delineating the experiences of embodiment generated by, and/or contributing to, vari­ous visualization dispositifs. As no existing theoretical framework does equal justice to all these levels, the scientific interest of project 5 is to develop such a framework.

Mediation as a concept has recently gained currency as an explicit theoretical tool in constructionist studies of science and technology such as Bruno Latour’s (Latour 1994). Project 5 will trace the intellectual history of these constructionist uses of the concept of mediation. It will relate its core ambiguity – is there a reality outside mediation? - to an old but still ongoing philosophical debate with regard to the possibility of thinking immediacy and the limits to discursive understanding. This debate is at least as old as Hegel’s critique of Kant’s separation of reality as appearance from reality an sich and his qualification of the apparent immediacy of sinnliche Gewissheit as dependent on negation and Vermittlung (Hegel, 1970: 287-433; 1952: 79-89); it is continued in the recurrence of the issue of corporeal immediacy in recent postmodern thought as what remains inacces­sible to, and disturbs the unity of, discursive reason (c.f. Oosterling, 1996). In the program a pivotal role is accorded to the (later) work of Merleau-Ponty that, although not providing a theory of media­tion as we envision it, by emphasizing the corporeal and social embedding of thought offers many clues to develop such a theory (Cf. Visker, 1993; Crossley, 1994; Slatman, 1997; Weiss, 1999; Ihde, 1999; Van de Vall, 2000). Project 5 will proceed by critically evaluating the main theoretical approaches taken as start­ing points by projects 1, 2, 3, and 4, e.g. Latour (1994), Merleau-Ponty (1964), Ihde (1999), Elkins (1999), Sawday (1996), and Nancy (1992). It will examine to what extent and in what respect these theories regard the body as historically mediated, and how it is mediated; how they answer the question of whether there is a body apart from the sum of its possible mediations and, finally, whether and to what extent they offer a theory of mediation which accounts for the specific subject/object structure of the body. These questions will be further qualified by asking how each theory maps interrelations between knowledge formation, representational conventions, technological intervention, social meanings, dis­semination, and subjective experiences; how it accounts for changes in these relations; and how it relates the body, its interior and its boundaries to its historical environment. As the other projects them­selves reflect upon and develop the theories they start with, the task of project 5 will also consist in drawing together their theoretical results.

 

Project planning

 

In all its stages project 5 will closely co- operate with the other projects. In the first years it will in­form and support the development of the theoretical investigations of the other projects, in the last year it will draw together the results of these investigations. Project 5 will take four years of each 0,4 fte, of which 0,2 replacement, senior researcher.

 

Year one:

Preparatory research. Examination of core texts representing the main theoretical traditions involved in the program. Articulation of the implicit or explicit theories of mediation, c.q. of the mediated body, involved in these texts. Conceptual analysis and intellectual history of the theoretical use of the notion of mediation or its equivalents in current phenomenological and constructionist texts.

 

Year two:

Continuation research year one. Writing of a paper, to be submitted to an international philosophical journal, stating the need for and the requirements to be met by a theory of the mediated body and analyzing the theoretical use of the notion of mediation or its equivalents in current phenomenological and constructionist texts

 

Year three:

Continuation research year one. Writing of a paper, to be submitted to an international philosophical journal, on the intellectual history of the theoretical use of the notion of mediation or its equivalents in current phenomenological and constructionist texts.

 

Year four:

Examination of the theoretical results of projects 1, 2, 3, and 4. Result: paper to be submitted to an international philosophical journal, articulating a theoretical framework for a theory of the mediated body. Organization and editing of the international volume mentioned in the general program intro­duction. Writing of synthesizing introductory article for this volume.

 

Throughout the four years: organization of a monthly seminar in which progress in the five projects will be discussed and experts from outside will be invited to present their work and give comments on the results of the program.

REFERENCES

 

Adler, Kathleen and Pointon, Marcia (Eds.). The Body Imaged. The Human Form and Visual Culture Since the Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Akrich, M. & B. Pasveer . Comment la Naissance Vient aux Femmes? Paris: Les Empêcheurs du Penser en Rond, 1996.

Akrich, M. & B. Pasveer. Embodiment and disembodiment in childbirth narratives. In: Akrich, M. & Berg. M., Bodies on Trial. London & New York: Routledge, forthcoming.

Baigrie, Brian S. (ed.) Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science. Toronto etc.: The University of Toronto Press, 1996.

Benthien, Claudia. 'Im Leibe wohnen: Zur Kulturgeschichte und Metaphorik des Hauses und der Grenze im Diskurs über die Haut', in: Uta Brandes & Claudia Neumann (eds.) Tasten. Schriften­reihe der Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesre­publik Deutschland, Schriftenreihe Forum, Band 7 (pp. 143-163), Göttingen: Steidl, 1996.

Berg, Marc en Annemarie Mol. Differences in Medicine: Unrave­ling Practices, Techniques, and Bodies. Duke University Press, 1998.

Van den Berg, J.H. Het menselijk lichaam. Een metabletisch onderzoek. Nijkerk: Callenbach, 1959.

Blum, Ann Shelby. Picturing Nature: American Nineteenth-Centu­ry Zoological Illustration. Princeton N.J.: Princeton U.P., 1993.

Blume, Stuart . Insight and Industry. On the Dynamics of technological Change in Medicine. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992.

Bossche, Marc van den. Natuur en lijfelijkheid: proeve van een esthetisch denken. Utrecht: Van Arkel, 1998.

Braun, Martha. Picturing Time. The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830 - 1904). Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Brecher, R. & E. Brecher, The Rays: A History of Radiology in the United States and Canada. Baltimore, Williams and Williams 1969.

Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble, London: Routledge, 1990.

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