tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7240582944172046688.post8838916077910689369..comments2018-11-22T00:59:01.928-08:00Comments on Visual Culture and BioScience: Waldby: Response to Science-phobic/Image-phobic/Content-phobic Somas 2CPNAShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02438216163752750156noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7240582944172046688.post-19421150475923907522007-03-13T14:41:00.000-07:002007-03-13T14:41:00.000-07:00I would like to respond to Catherine Waldby’s comm...I would like to respond to Catherine Waldby’s comments on Aguilera-Hellweg’s, I don't bite and to Suzanne's Science-phobic/Image-phobic/Content-phobic Somas 2 posting regarding body anomalies. I think it is apropos to mention Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject. Though the abject is rooted in psychoanalysis, its application to cultural, media arts and visual studies has shed light on our relationship to images that repel and compel. In Carol Clover’s writings on gender in the modern horror film, she writes of our desire to experience/seek out/create/appropriate visual images that are repugnant, gratuitous and thrilling. It is this “thrill” and shrill aspect that is relevant to scientific/bio art imagery. Waldby comments, “I think part of the reason these kinds of images are so difficult to witness is that they attest to the highly contingent nature of what we consider the human form.” Julia Kristeva’s discussion of the female body as a cultural symbol of contempt (per memory from Barbara Creed’s Horror and the Monstrous Feminine) as it “swells, bleeds, lactates and changes shapes” speaks to our unpredictable and dependent relationship with nature which problematizes our mirage of order and “norm”. The abject describes a critical feature of the human. As Waldby puts it—“it is a too graphic reminder of the fact that we are all just one step away from monstrosity.” It seems this arena of abjection theory could be applied to the controversial images of embryology and human morphology.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com