Virtual Bodies: Anatomy, Technology, and the Inhuman in Descartes

Abstract

Virtual Bodies: Anatomy, Technology, and the Inhuman in Descartes Dalia Judovitz Rene Descartes's Discourse on the Method (1637) marks a major t u r n i n g point i n the representation of the body i n the Western tradition. Rather than valorizing the lived body and no­ tions of experience, as his predecessor Michel de Montaigne had done i n The Essays (1588), Descartes focuses on the body no longer as subject, but as object of knowledge, by redefining i t anatomically, technologically, and philosophically. He proceeds from the anatomical redefinition of the body i n terms of the cir­ culation of blood, to its technological resynthesis as a machine, only to ascertain its philosophical reduction to a material thing. Descartes's elaboration of the mind-body duality w i l l reinforce the autonomy of the body as a material thing, whose purely ob­ jective and mechanical character w i l l mark a fundamental depar­ ture from previous humanist traditions. Decontextualized from its w o r d l y fabric, the Cartesian body w i l l cease to function by reference to the human, since its lived, experiential reality w i l l be supplanted through mechanical analogues. Descartes's anatomical interpretation of the body in terms of the circulation of blood breaks away from earlier humoral con­ ceptions of the body predominant into the early part of the sev­ enteenth century. Dating back to Galen (Claudius Galenus, 130¬ 200? A.D.), the body's physiological complexion was understood to be governed by the interplay and balance of the four humors: blood, phlegm, choler (yellow bile) and melancholy (black bile). This h u m o r a l conception enabled an understanding of the body that was flexible and transitive, since the body's complexion changed depending on the specific combinations and particular mixture of these four fluids. The dominance of any particular humor created an imbalance that shifted the individual's com­ plexion from health to disease. This humoral interpretation of