The Lacanian Conspiracy
Ted Hiebert
I went to school with an artist named Ryan Klaschinsky. We are no longer in contact, but one of his artworks has stayed with me. A work best not seen, but imagined. The Spirit is Willing but the Flesh is Weak. A work about the futility of flesh -- the futility of bodies in a delirious world. Flesh colored liquid foam -- haphazardly strewn about on an old turntable. Prosthetic body parts, refuse. Tongues, or brains. That special shade of rosy pink has never looked more decrepit. The Spirit is Willing but the Flesh is Weak. Revolving flesh, spun around, flopping from side to side. Useless flesh. Front row at the car crash -- meaning not only an unobstructed view but the possibility of being hit oneself. The confrontation with one's own being as a result of the horrific -- the fate of the posthuman.
It has been asserted by many that the body has become virtual. This is the fate of flesh in the 21st century. Not only coded flesh and data bodies, but more importantly -- as always -- is the inverse. Flesh codes and body data as we self-regulate towards a pending utopia of nihilism itself. Ultimately, it is the fate of nihilism to be exactly that which the posthuman demands.
Make no mistake, we are posthuman. Not only because we are inextricably wired to the world around us -- prosthetic extensions on every front, from television to radio, internet to video games, cell phones to email... even clothing and language fit this particular bill -- but more importantly again, because we are wired to ourselves, puppets that will not give up the delusion of being also the puppet master. The history of Western thinking has been -- quite simply -- wrong. The first technology was not language, nor the wheel, nor even the tree-branch-turned-spear. The first technology is and has always been the technology of reflection -- that through which we inscribe ourselves onto our own flesh.
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Consider the hypothesis: If I didn't already know myself I might well fail to recognize myself in my own reflection.
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