Plastic Surgery as Subversive Spectacle-

    Performance artist Orlan enacts the Theater of Cruelty that theater innovator Antonin Artaud was unable to see fully manifested. In a series of operation-performances titled The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan, she permeates the faculties of and encroaches upon her audience through blood, ritual, and fetishized beauty. Appropriating components of classical beauty ideals and images, Orlan breaks free of the marasmus Artaud railed against, de-sacrilising masterpieces and the cultural connotations of feminine bodies that hinge on plastic surgery’s successes and successors. Orlan “moves the bars of the cage” and places us as spectators at the perimeter of her own interiority, as though we are the bourgeoisie watching the performance at Charenton.

    The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan begins with a digitized composite image Orlan created. Each of the figures used to create this composite face is an idealized feminine personage: Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Botticelli’s Venus, Francois Pascal Simon Gerard’s Psyche, and Gustav Moreau’s Europa. Orlan claims that these figures were chosen “not for the canons of beauty they are supposed to represent… but rather on account of the stories associated with them.”[1]  Even so, by permanently, or at least semi-permanently, adhering renowned cultural signifiers of feminine beauty to her own body, Orlan rubs away at the division between the given self of the external and its adjoining connotations, and the chosen self of the internal.             

    The installation of Orlan’s composite face, over the course of nine plastic surgeries, ensures that the questions she asks are presented “in terms of new technologies”[2] without which most of Orlan’s pieces could not be performed or produced. This reliance on technological apparatuses demonstrates the dissolution of the binary opposition of nature and culture (the synthetic; technology): a new, post-feminine, created form of “beauty” asks us to “rethink our most basic assumptions about beauty, religion, art history, sexuality, and, ultimately, about the stability of the self,”[3] to challenge dominant cultural categories and hierarchies. Thus, The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan, in large part, focuses on elucidating the fictiveness of antiquarian binaries. It breaks down the barrier between nature (the mythical Other figure Simone de Beauvoir paints) and the created product, between the inherent locus of ideal beauty and the reconstructive processes used to recast a woman in accordance with that amorphous ideal.

    Contemporary feminist theorists and philosophers of the body explore how normalized priority, in Western culture, is dedicated in accordance with hegemonic oppositions that found themselves upon a gendered echelon. This is attributable to Rene Descartes’ “findings” in the Meditations and an historic disparagement of the body that both precedes and follows from the Cartesian rationale. As a result, females are implicated as weaker because of an overarching embodiment which they are pinioned to. The development of this brute bifurcation has been documented and discussed throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Critical theorist Elizabeth Grosz meticulously characterizes not only the mind/body opposition in philosophy, but also the “insidious” collection of additional oppositional pairs that follow from the Cartesian split. Among those Grosz lists are

   

    the distinctions between reason and passion, sense and sensibility, inside and outside, self and other, depth and surface, reality and appearance, mechanism and vitalism, transcendence and immanence, temporality and spatiality, psychology and physiology, (and) form and matter.[4]

     Orlan’s art, in contrast, results not only in the proliferation of meanings and interpretations of the bodily “perimeter” and “beauty,” but also of a potentially infinite composite of discussions about the interactivity of her performances themselves. The bodies of Orlan’s observers also become involved; reeling reactions of disgust, horror, or approval root out preliminary questioning of the binary oppositions Orlan’s work addresses. The audience, unable to escape their bodies as they witness her transformation, become participants in a forum for a discursive aesthetics, an embodied space for political and artistic discourses that forward heterogeneity through shock and spectacle. When Orlan says that the body is “obsolete,” this is not to demean the body or its associated oppositional pairs; rather, it is a call for an integration of elements formerly opposed: technology and nature.

    By decrying cultural comfortability as a pejorative primitivism, Orlan rewrites the narrative of the radical elective reconstruction and unveils the intertextuality of technology, the canonical, patriarchy, and gendered decision-making. She provokes a questioning of the validity and continuation of the ideal, the image-barrier, and the intolerance of the market of plastic surgery by tearing down curtains at the sacred temples of beauty regimes. In doing so, she intervenes in the Cartesian underwriting that so pervades Western culture today, parodying the paradoxical veneration of psychic and physical “perfection.” Her sacrificial undertakings echo the Artaudian call for artist to be “like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames.”

                                                                     -Hannah Levinson

[1]  Orlan, “Orlan on Becoming-Orlan,” in The Body: A Reader, ed. Miriam Fraser and Monica Greco (New York, NY:Routledge, 2005): 312.

[2]  Ibid, 312.

[3]  Rhonda Garelick, “Fashioning Hybridity,” The Drama Review 53, no. 2 (Summer 2009)

[4]  Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington, ID: Indiana University Press, 1994): 3.

Snow in Charlotte?-
    It has been cooooooold these last few weeks.  There is a lot of talk about global warming being a myth.  How can it be so cold when the earth is supposed to be getting warmer?  People, observing their immediate surroundings assume that if the temperature is cooler than usual, then the Earth cannot possibly be getting warmer.  But this reasoning is rather short-sighted.
    There is an overwhelming amount of evidence which shows that the global temperature has risen over the past twenty years.  Studies by the NOAA clearly show that CO2 levels have dramatically risen over the last few years.  CO2, along with other greenhouse gases, trap heat inside the Earth’s atmosphere.  This cause the global temperature to rise.  This is causing the phenomena known as Global Warming.
    Besides a few studies funded by oil companies, and others who have a controlling interest in fossil fuels, global warming is a well-documented fact accepted by most scientists.  But the question remains, why is it snowing more often?  The answer lies in moisture.  With higher temperatures in the atmosphere, we find higher amounts of water vapor.  According to studies, the atmosphere’s water vapor content has increased by 0.4 kilograms per cubic meter per decade since 1988.  With more moisture in the air, there is a greater chance for precipitation.  Therefore during the winter season, there is a greater chance for snow.
    Keep in mind that weather is not climate.  The current weather patterns affecting the U.S. allow for more snow than usual, but that does not mean the global temperature is not rising.

                        -Ryan Shullaw and Eric Virzi

On Nostalgia-

    Our connection to our past is something that we have always tried to reconcile with. This connection is really something that we want to have, not something that comes naturally. We view the past as our connection to objects. Our reliance on how these objects exist, as occupying our space and how they form the space around us, ultimately becomes the memories that we have.  Nostalgia becomes a piece of us in how these objects, that relate to our space, begin to shape us as individuals. Take as a sign of this the love of someone that we cared about. This person immediately becomes of the space around us, something that we relate to as an object. The idea that forms from this object is how our conception of the space around our bodies is, at that time. The bounds and limits of this space are ultimately perceived to be something that forms our memories, how we imagine the period of time we occupied. Our mind invariably perceives and thinks as a series of shapes, how an individual is around us effects our mind and the perception it has. So, to think of an individual or a place or even a period of time, ultimately we think of this as a part and series of shapes. The objects formed from these perceptions are things that we relate to as things forming the best congruence, or something like a consistent narrative.

    The relationship that we form with arguments, becomes how we form our relationship with this congruence. Arguments are of course a series of premises that justify a conclusion, they form our rationale for accepting and dealing with space. As we begin to form these arguments we have a relationship to their outcomes and rationales. For instance (to put it very simply), “I loved my days on the farm, I am having a memory of the farm, therefore I am having a good memory”, is how this argument works. We form arguments to justify nostalgia and the memories that they have. The days on the farm and the related elements formed my space. As this space formed and my memories were formed, an argument was made. This argument formed out of my relation to this space and formed my memories. It is too much to say that memories are in their very essence geometric shapes, but they form as something with a permeable and finite property that allows them to operate as shapes( the memories themselves, the images are still shapes). The only problem with such an argument is how we consider trauma that we cannot relate to.

                            -Mark Brinton

Judge Stevens’ Dissent-
     Appointed by Gerald Ford in 1975, John Stevens is the oldest member of the Supreme Court.  After reading his dissent from the majority opinion of the Supreme Court on Citizens United v. FEC  I believe he might be among the wisest as well. 

     Judge Stevens wrote an overwhelming 90 pages explaining the reason for his dissent in the recent Supreme Court case.  With a majority of 5, the Supreme Court claimed that a statute of the BCRA infringed upon Citizen United’s First Amendment rights.  Without the unfocused giddiness of youth, Stevens is able to create a cohesive argument that shows how the Supreme Courts’ ruling was a “technical glitch”.  His introduction immediately jumps into the “principal holdings” of the court with which he disagrees.  The courts think that Citizens United argument hinges on “if” corporations are protected by the first amendment and Stevens identified the hinge to be “how” they are protected.  This confusion, Stevens claims, has caused the court to overturn a century of jurisprudence.  Stevens further elaborates on this inaccurate understanding of the case by the court when he discusses how the court has overreached their bounds.  He explains that even if Citizens United’s First Amendment Rights had been violated, that would have been only a partial challenge of a BCRA statue and not a Facial Challenge, which is necessary for a statute to be addressed in its entirety.  If the entirety of a statute or law is challenged then research is conducted to perform analysis on the benefits of said law.  The courts completely ignored this code.
      Stevens claims that the courts basic premise which is the “constant reiteration, of the proposition that the First Amendment bars regulatory distinctions based on a speaker’s identity, including its “identity” as a corporation”  to be nothing more than a “glittering generality [that] has rhetorical appeal [but] it is not a correct statement of the law”.  To further discredit the majority Stevens adds “The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is…inadequate to justify the Court’s disposition of this case.”

       At the end of this introductory segment Stevens writes “I regret the length of what follows, but the importance and novelty of the Court’s opinion require a full response.”  Within one sentence he tells us several important things.  First if this was our first time reading a judge’s case writings he goes ahead and tells us that this one is unusually long, Second, he tells us that this is necessary because the Supreme Court majority was so seriously misguided. 

       To prove the misguided nature of the majority decision, Stevens provides a history lesson on the United States framers and how back then, the corporate world operated in a realm designed by the government.  He tells us of the philosophies of founding father types like Thomas Jefferson who understood the “soulless” nature of corporations.   

      Perhaps the only way to really appreciate this substantial plea for Socratic rationality is to dive into it yourself.  The text is available online.

      Hopefully rational argument will triumph.

                 -Katie Kocher

What is Slacktivism? 

It’s any kind of action directed towards a social cause that involves little or no effort on the part of the participant. 

Slacker activism! 

Yes, typically awareness-oriented tasks, like joining online groups, wearing wristbands and ribbons, putting bumper stickers and magnets on your car, signing internet petitions, etc. 

But everybody does these things.  They are a great way of getting the word out, and getting tons of people involved, what’s wrong with that? 

Absolutely nothing.  The problem is that awareness does not always translate into action.  Slacktivists are those who satisfy themselves with the illusion of having an impact; those who would like to believe they are making a difference without lifting a finger or losing a penny, but are really just expending enough energy to rest their consciences. 

And pat themselves on the back. 

Besides, a lot of slacktivist campaigns barely succeed in educating people about the topic they are being made aware of. 

Like posting your bra color on your Facebook status, without even mentioning the whole breast cancer issue that it is allegedly aimed at. 

Exactly. 

Although it did succeed in giving everyone a legitimate excuse to talk about boobs. 

Isn’t that what it was really about? 

It is a bit odd that they decided to raise awareness for a disease that most people are already aware of. 

On the other hand, people can be aware of a product and not necessarily feel compelled to buy it. 

They do if they’ve been exposed to enough advertisements!  Imagine if people gave as much money to charities as they spend on things like soft drinks and body sprays. 

Well, activists could use the same types of marketing strategies as big businesses, pull at peoples’ heartstrings, manipulate their needs and desires, but that’s an awfully patho-logical solution, don’t you think? 

For a social cause or for a corporate cause? 

Both…don’t you love that SPCA commercial with Sarah McLachlan? 

I see what you mean.  But how are we suppose to get people to care about social issues? 

You educate them, inform them about the situation and explain why they should care about it.  Most importantly, it must be made clear that support begins with awareness, and does not end with it.

What about donating money?

Donating money is great, but donating time and skills is even better.  Always remember that the effort you put into a cause is directly proportional to the impact you make.   

-Ryan Shullaw

An Argument against Direct-Democracy-

      Our current political process is broken. Influenced by the barriers of ideology and corporate discontent, the way we have expected to exist as a democracy is over. The problem lies in the will of the American electorate. Citizens extend their conscious will to those they elect, who in turn act according to that will. But what has occurred is an evaporation of any sufficient reasoning belonging to the will of the popular electorate. Their desires and needs are never fulfilled by the government at hand. Instead it is dictated to them through rhetoric and the fear that develops from this. But this piece is not about the failures of a republic, it is about the dangers of what a direct democracy would produce. The obvious point being that a direct democracy would limit the idea of the individual and instead create a dictatorship of the majority.

    Democracy is not an actuality but an idea, an idea which will never be fully realized. With a direct democracy this idea will be farther away from its actualization, because at the center of the premise lies the concept of the citizen legislature. In a normal republic the legislature lies as an elected body compromised of various factions. These factions (liberal, conservative, moderate and so on) work out compromises to insure the best outcome of a particular measure. This enterprise in the end bares little result, but helps to keep a fairly representative interest at play. With a direct democracy, since there is no formal organization which allows for factions to come together and work out compromises, the majority can simply dictate to the minority what is correct and right. Even in an ideal circumstance this would not bare the most accurate telling of rights and ideas. Whites could dictate to blacks what is right, heterosexuals onto homosexuals and a state like California could dictate anything it wanted. The basic result is a nightmare of majority views being dictated to everyone else, influenced entirely by the media and advertisement buys, which explains how the lack of information directed to the citizenry would cause such a problem to grow worse.

    The average American can be swayed and influenced easily, a good example of this is the 2004 PIPA Report from the University of Maryland. This report indicated that most American voters believed that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11. The failure this report indicated was that the populace at large was misinformed and believed the misinformation was due to the machinations of the Bush administration. This ignorance that a population of Americans live in expresses a scary abstraction opposed to their actual lives, ones in which they believe themselves to be informed and right in the choices they make. Instead, the horrible reality is that citizens’ choices are actually designed to serve others’ interest. Even with the possibility of a system free of this misinformation, the knowledge of the society as a whole would still be what dictates voting habits. If the wrong information got out about a certain subject and infected the populace at large, where would the implications end? Would Prop 8 (the California referendum banning homosexual marriage) not have passed, if various institutions not made an effort to misinform and direct the public to vote a certain way? There is no way of telling what an individual’s knowledge of a subject is or if their views are clouded and ruled by ignorance. Therefore, allowing a plurality of these individuals to decide public policy in a direct way is dangerous. Despite the failure of the current system, a direct system, even in its most ideal form, would be even more dangerous.

-Mark Brinton

Existential Responsibility -

Jean-Paul Sartre, in Being and Nothingness, discusses a phenomena he labels bad faith. Sartre thought people deceived themselves, usually unconsciously, in order to hide the potential meaninglessness of their, quite often, menial life. One way bad faith manifests itself is in societal role playing, Sartre describes a person playing waiter. Playing waiter means to be subservient and polite. But, being a waiter is generally a banal, though sometimes hectic, task, which does not give one’s life meaning. No one is born to be a waiter and prestige is not granted to the one fulfilling the role of waiter. Yet, the person playing waiter feels more meaningful within society and their individual life by simply fulfilling a role, which contributes to society. Another often used manifestation of bad faith is external meaning. Rather than acknowledging the lack of ultimate meaning in the universe, people will seek out systems (i.e. religions, cults, nationalism, etc.) which will assign an overarching meaning to life. Bad faith helps mask the anxiety and forlornness arising out of the true human condition; humanity is thrown into freedom and choice.

In Being and Nothingness, Sartre claims humanity is “condemned to be free.” Usually when we think of being condemned, we think of being not free, we think of a certain unfreedom which is impossible to avoid. Being condemned to freedom means to always be presented with a choice. Human-beings have the freedom to choose anything in their lives, without consequence from false moralities (going to hell), as long as it is physically possible and not met by an overcoming external force. When one has freedom, one has responsibility. Responsibility is defined simply as the direct cause for any given effect. So, the one who murders another is responsible for the death of the other, as the direct cause, not as some mystical disturbance of the universe which will cause an imminent death strike from a god, thereby setting the scale of justice at zero. The problem of bad faith is it allows people to ignore their responsibility by giving the freedom in life away to external systems and roles.

To realize existential responsibility is to accept the freedom thrust upon each human at birth. Each individual is responsible for how each of their decisions and actions affect the world. Again, that is to say that humans are causes in the world. Even if, say in the military, a soldier is ordered to attack a group of enemy soldiers, the soldier is still responsible for the death of the enemy. The soldier must go beyond, out in front of, the order. The soldier must act as an individual. If that soldier is practicing bad faith, they can claim the responsibility for the death of the enemy falls on the commanding officer who had ordered the kill. In that case, the soldier accepts the role “soldier” and subscribes to the meaning and structure of the military, heaving their personal responsibility onto an institutional body.

Furthermore, if each individual is completely free and responsible for their choices and actions and human-beings exist within society, then each human has an equal responsibility for society. Granted, in the current power structure, some individuals have a greater power to impact society, usually in accordance with personal interests. But the current hierarchy only exists because people continue to shrug responsibility, people continue to give away freedom. (In America’s case, citizens give an increasing power to corporations and corrupt politicians.) In a truly egalitarian and democratic society, each individual could claim freedom. But, despite how oppressive societies may deny freedom, certain choices remain, although more extreme choices, so responsibility remains. Inaction is a deliberate choice as well.

In order not to practice bad faith, one must realize their freedom and responsibility. Part of the realization is the acceptance and claiming of absolute choice and responsibility. One must choose responsibility, this responsibility defined as the claiming of one’s choices and actions.

-Eric Virzi