Doctoring Fukushima: from nuclear catastrophe to natural bodily function
In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident, an interesting video has been circulating. Disguised as an educational animation targeting children, it is actually an anonymous pro-nuclear propaganda feature based on a tweet by media artist Kazuhiko Hachiya. Nuclear Boy (a character representing Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant) has a bad case of stomach-ache. A series of defecation-based incidents ensue. Doctors take turn to ease his condition and hopefully they will help him avoid ‘Tchernobyl diarrea scenario’.
Scatological humor aside, what is interesting here is the concurring efforts to medicalize and to naturalize a nuclear disaster. If the explosion of a reactor is comparable to defecation, it becomes a natural bodily function. It is thus inscribed in the normal course of events. It is even vital that Nuclear Boy ‘passes some gas’ at some point. In this case, like in others I’ve been discussing in this blog, the negative effects of human-made technologies are normalized by inscribing them into a medical discourse about the body. As far as medical knowledge is summoned up to provide scientific backing to the claim that ‘everything is for the best’, the entire event becomes a moralizing hygiene lesson comparable to those that early 20th institutions used to deliver to the masses.
What is medicine all about? Staring at screens
Recently, the New York Times’s blog dealing with health and medicine, Well, featured an interesting piece on Desktop medicine. The author Pauline W. Chen, M.D., maintains that medical profession has been profoundly changed by the advent of desktop computers. In the past, doctoring was all about « sitting at patients’ bedside ». Today, it’s basically about staring at a screen. The article is quick to point out that this reflection is not exempt from a certain nostalgic idealization of the past.
I would add that saying that « we have gone from bedside medicine to desktop medicine » as a bit of an ideological dimension to it, too – as far as it relies on a technodeterministic meta-narrative (« computer-mediated communication is superseding face-to-face social interaction », « machine automation replace human labour », « robots will rule the world », and so on). Read more
« L’homme transcendé » de l’artiste japonais Suguru Goto (31 mars 2011)
Au Cube d’Issy-les-Moulineaux, une performance artistique pour explorer l’extension des potentialités dans la relation homme-machine : l’interaction entre les images vidéo représentant des corps virtuels et le corps de l’artiste Suguru Goto présent sur scène, qui peut, grâce à son BodySuit, transformer ces images en temps réel. Un puzzle se crée autour des différences et des ressemblances entre corps réel et virtuel.
Festival Némo
Le Cube – 20, Cours Saint Vincent 92130 Issy-les-Moulineaux
Tél. 01 58 88 3000 Fax. 01 58 88 3010Le jeudi 31 mars 11
Le ‘droit de jouissance’ dans la culture du numérique : objets et représentations du netporn (slides)
La dernière séance de mon séminaire EHESS Corps et TIC : approches socio-anthropologiques des usages numériques a eu lieu le jeudi 24 févr. 2011 : comment se servir de la pensée de Toni Negri pour appréhender le sexe en ligne, ses utopies, ses articulations avec le Web 2.0 (à travers le porno participatif), la multiplication des fétichismes. Voici, comme d’habitude, les slides.
Retrouvez les comptes rendus de toutes les séances aux adresses suivantes :
* 25 novembre 2010 : Virus
* 9 décembre 2010 : Cyborg
* 13 janvier 2011 : Avatar
* 27 janvier 2011 : eSanté
* 11 février 2011 : Réseaux
* 24 février 2011 : Jouissance
Bums, bridges, and primates: Some elements for a sociology of online interactions
This text was presented at the conference “Web Culture: New Modes of Knowledge, New Sociabilities”, Villa Gillet, Lyon (France), February 10th, 2011. Check against delivery. Click here for the .pdf version. Click here for the French translation.
In today’s presentation I will focus on the kind of social structures that users of computer-mediated global online communication networks (notably, the Web and social media) contribute to put in place. The point I will try to make is that science understanding of Web-based sociabilities has progressed enormously in the last decade, and that this should inform public policies touching on the Web, its regulation and governance.
WHERE HAVE ALL THE COMPUTER BUMS GONE?
Early glimpses into the social implications of ICT at a micro-level (that is: for the users themselves) date back to the mid-1970s and focus on the negative effect of these technologies. At the very origins of computer culture, we witness the emergence of the stereotype of the socially awkward computer hacker, isolated by the calculating machine which alienates him and keeps him apart from his peers. This characterization dates back to a time before the Web. In his Computer Power and Human Reason : From Judgement to Calculation (1976) Joseph Weizenbaum delivers us the portrayal of this subculture of compulsive computer programmer – or, as he liked to dub them, “computer bums”.
These are “possessed students” who “work until they nearly drop, twenty, thirty hours at a time. Their food, if they arrange it, is brought to them: coffee, Cokes, sandwiches. If possible, they sleep on cots near the computer. […] Their rumpled clothes, their unwashed and unshaven faces, and their uncombed hair all testify that they are oblivious to their bodies and to the world in which they move. They exist, at least when so engaged, only through and for the computers.”
Since this first occurrence, and for a long time, common sense has almost unmistakably associated computer use and social isolation. Cultural analysts, novelists, commentators have been developing on this trope. Iconic cyberpunk author William Gibson, famously described Case, the main character of Neuromancer (1984), as a cyberspace-addict incapable of functioning in an offline social situation.
Le corps dans les réseaux sociaux : technologie du soi, technologie du nous (slides)
La cinquième séance de mon séminaire EHESS Corps et TIC : approches socio-anthropologiques des usages numériques a eu lieu le vendredi 11 févr. 2011. Le sujet traité : le corps dans les réseaux sociaux en ligne, comment les amis sur Facebook influencent l’apparence physique des utilisateurs, comment le choix de la photo d’un profil peut avoir un impact sur le capital social en ligne. Voici, comme d’habitude, les slides.
La prochaine (et dernière séance) est prévue pour jeudi 24 février 2011 (17h, salle 5, 105 Bd Raspail). Il y sera question de jouissance et sexe en ligne. Pour s’inscrire, il suffit de m’envoyer un petit mail gentil.
E-Santé : Résistance, autonomie et environnements apomédiés
La quatrième séance de mon séminaire EHESS Corps et TIC : approches socio-anthropologiques des usages numériques a eu lieu le jeudi 27 janv. 2011. Le sujet traité : e-santé, médecine 2.0, le rôle des professionnels de santé, des collectifs de militants des droits des patients et des pouvoirs étatiques. Voici, comme d’habitude, les slides.
ATTENTION CHANGEMENT DE DATE : La prochaine séance (où il sera question de corps dans les médias sociaux) aura exceptionnellement lieu le VENDREDI 11 février 2011 de 17h à 19h en SALLE 2, EHESS, 105 bd Raspail 75006 Paris. Pour s’inscrire, il suffit de m’envoyer un petit mail gentil.
E sante – Résistance, autonomie et environnements apomédiés
Les Avatars : surpuissance, régénération et devenir technologique du corps en ligne
La troisième séance de mon séminaire EHESS Corps et TIC : approches socio-anthropologiques des usages numériques a eu lieu le jeudi 13 janv. 2011. Le sujet traité : la figure de l’avatar, son rôle dans la culture numérique, ses liens étroits avec, d’un côté, les expériences vidéoludiques, de l’autre les applications biomédicales. Voilà les slides et une bibliographie des textes cités.
La prochaine séance (où il sera question d’e-Santé) aura lieu le jeudi 27 janvier 2011 de 17h à 19h en salle 5, EHESS, 105 bd Raspail 75006 Paris. Pour s’inscrire, il suffit de m’envoyer un petit mail gentil.
My article « A History of Virulence » finally published in Body and Society
Sage journal Body and Society vol 16, n. 4 is finally out! Pardon my enthusiasm, but this issue features my 30-page essay A History of Virulence: The Body and Computer Culture in the 1980s: a killer mix of hackerdom, virality and computer nostalgia that also happens to be IMHO one hell of a contribution to the cultural history of the body in cyberculture.
Abstract: The recent turn in ubiquitous computing challenges previous theories of ‘technological disembodiment’. In a mediascape where technology permeates bodies, the current discourse of viral information insinuates elements of fear and risk associated with both physical presence and computer usage. This article adopts a socio-historical approach to investigate the factors underlying the early emergence of such features of our social imaginary by tracking them back to the computer culture of the 1980s. Analysing both mainstream and underground press sources from 1982 to 1991, a discursive core is revealed that revolves around the ‘computer virus’ metaphor. Popularized in this period, this notion came to resonate with mounting moral panic over the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Anxieties about the body in computer culture are then conceptualized (and historically contextualized) along two dimensions: first, the political proximity between HIV/AIDS activists and computer hackers during the FDA clinical trials controversy of 1987—8; and, second, the ideological reinforcement provided by academic progressive elements to these political actions. The implications of these results are discussed.
A few weeks ago, I published a « autor’s cut » version on this very blog (here part1 and part2) and you can download the unread proofs by clicking here (not for citation, please). Of course, if you want to download the published version, help yourself here. You might as well drop me a kind email and ask for a certain attachment ;) And if you want to cite the article, because that’s what academics do, please find enclosed the complete reference.
Casilli, Antonio A. (2010). A History of Virulence: The Body and Computer Culture in the 1980s Body & Society, 16 (4), 1-31 DOI: 10.1177/1357034X10383880
Linux Virgin : notre fétichisme technologique quotidien
Au hasard de mes archives je retrouve un vieux message de la liste de diffusion du Lancaster Linux User Group annonçant la mise en ligne de la série Web érotico-artistico-satirique Linux Virgin (2005). Au fil des épisodes, toujours le même scénario : sous le regard d’un voyeur-geek, une dominatrice-hacker tout de cuir habillée forçait une jeune femme à… installer un serveur Linux. Allégorie de notre fétichisme technologique quotidien (et des rapports de domination qu’il sous-entend), cette création d’un groupe d’étudiants de la Columbia University a laissé peu de traces de son passage sur la Toile. En bon cyber-archéologue, je suis allé la dénicher afin d’apporter de la matière à discussion pour la rencontre sur Corps et Internet, à laquelle je participerai avec le psychanalyste Yann Leroux mardi 21 décembre 2010, à 19h00 à La Cantine (51 rue Montmartre, Passage des Panoramas, 12 Galerie Montmartre, 75002 Paris). PS. Malgré ce préambule, la vidéo ne contient pas de nudité ni de gros mots : elle est complètement SFW (Safe For Work).
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What’s this blog about?
I'm an associate professor of Digital Humanities at the Paris Institute of Technology (ParisTech) and a researcher in sociology at the Edgar-Morin Center (EHESS, Paris). Bodyspacesociety offers regular updates about my ongoing research, publications, and teaching. If you want updates on media features and conferences, please click here.
The views presented on this blog are solely mine and do not represent the positions of my institutions of affiliation.
New books out now!
The special issue of the journal 'Communications' Cultures du numérique is out. Also, you might want to check my latest book Les liaisons numériques. Vers une nouvelle sociabilité?. Both published by Editions du Seuil, both available in bookshops and online.
» Buy Liaisons numériques
» Visit the companion website
» Buy Cultures du numérique (Communications, n. 88)
All blog content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 France License.
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