Abstract
52 Here I would like to discuss the potential limits of two popularly adopted theoretics of the body that are applied in the study of aging—Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock’s three bodies and the mindful body and Donna Haraway’s cyborg model (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987 and Haraway 1991).1 The three bodies and cyborg models focus on ontologies that blur, mix, hybridize, or bridge dualisms, specifically Western dualisms. An unintended result of this focus is that in detailing what is being blurred, these authors inadvertently both lend legitimacy to the characteristic features of the very dualisms that they purportedly deny and proceed to limit their own analysis to these same categories.
Highlights
I would like to discuss the potential limits of two popularly adopted theoretics of the body that are applied in the study of aging—Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock’s three bodies and the mindful body and Donna Haraway’s cyborg model (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987 and Haraway 1991).1 The three bodies and cyborg models focus on ontologies that blur, mix, hybridize, or bridge dualisms, Western dualisms
By adopting an analytic suggested by the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon (1980, 1992), we can shift away from explications of the ontologically mixed state of the body and onto questions concerning the aging body as process, becoming, or ontogenesis
This commentary stems from doctoral dissertation research into Japan’s aging society crisis and the attending concerns about how best to analytically approach old age as a process that extends beyond the individual, body, society, and the resulting politics of representation
Summary
I would like to discuss the potential limits of two popularly adopted theoretics of the body that are applied in the study of aging—Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock’s three bodies and the mindful body and Donna Haraway’s cyborg model (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987 and Haraway 1991). The three bodies and cyborg models focus on ontologies that blur, mix, hybridize, or bridge dualisms, Western dualisms. When applying the three bodies or cyborg analytic to the study of aging bodies the body will be ontologized as a coming into relation of two otherwise disparate entities such as the social and individual, mind and body, human and machine, nature and culture This analytic may be useful for investigating the politics of coming together of different spheres such as the social and individual, in regards to the social symbolic ormeaning-filleddimensions of aging and its individual embodiments. By adopting an analytic suggested by the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon (1980, 1992), we can shift away from explications of the ontologically mixed state of the body and onto questions concerning the aging body as process, becoming, or ontogenesis This commentary stems from doctoral dissertation research into Japan’s aging society crisis (shōshi kōreika mondai) and the attending concerns about how best to analytically approach old age as a process that extends beyond the individual, body, society, and the resulting politics of representation. I conclude with an introduction to Simondon’s theory of ontogenesis and its potential applicability to the study of aging, for attending to the many different and contributing forces at work in the becoming of old age
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