If human agency can be defined as "the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power", what or whom might we be using to increase the power or significance of our actions? Identifying or even categorizing every possible contributor to human agency is likely an impossible task when one begins to consider the microorganisms that live within, upon and around us. Yet, understanding that there are a multitude of contributors and that an individual is not ever acting alone is perhaps crucial to cultivating a sense of empathy with 'otherness'. Might this empathy foster ethical behavior in our actions in the world? If it is truly possible to act ethically in this particular sense, what might that look like?
Peering through a feminist lens towards bioethics and artistic ethics, I find it imperative to consider the ethics surrounding human actions on a body or bodies. Whose body are we talking about, or imperatively, who owns it? How do we define bodies? As discrete units? Jane Bennett, in a lecture entitled, Artistry and Agency in a World of Vibrant Matter at the New School in New York explains, "It's in the nature of bodies to be susceptible to infusion, invasion, collaboration, by or with other bodies. Any extant contour or boundary of entity-hood is always subject to change. Bodies are essentially intercorporeal." This measure of exchange begs consideration of the question: who is acting on whom? *The concept of the politicized body is not exclusive to feminism, yet questions of power, control and ownership resonate deeply with feminist concerns, with regards to the social treatment of body/ identity.
If the sense of identity is removed from the body as a discrete unit, it becomes no longer a subject and no longer a person or a creature, but a fuzzy material, a 'thing' without true boundaries (Bennett argues that things do have power despite our inability or refusal to recognize it). Ownership then becomes transferable. What then, might the ethical considerations be when using body as material in an artistic practice, or in a research practice, or in a political practice? Is it mine to use?
The above micrographic image is a dried cochineal beetle, whose body is picked from the prickly pear cactus (whose body it feeds upon like a parasite), dried and then crushed with mortar and pestle to create a fine, deep red powder. This crushed-bug-body powder is then boiled in water to extract an alarming and delightful vibrant red dye. It is the most potent red possible within the spectrum of natural dyes. This tiny body, full of carmine (the chemical that produces the red colour), becomes a contributor to human agency toward acts of human creation. It is used to create all of the red (or pink) things that humans like and that make us who we are: lipstick and other cosmetics, candy, food, clothing, etc. Our identities are built (as bodies, as discrete units) on the erasure of the identity of the cochineal beetle. She is simply encoded E120, or more romantically for art uses as, "crimson lake." *It is only the female cochineal beetle that is used to make dye powder, as the males fly off after mating and do not dig in to the prickly pear for feeding.
Red is the colour of power--of vitality, blood, life, passion, action, even aggression. Carminic acid is produced as a deterrent to other predatory insects, yet carmine is consumed as colouring in many foods. The cochineal (or more correctly, the chemical housed in her scaly exoskeleton) is used to make people food more fun and appetizing, though for some, the thought of literally ingesting an insect might work as an appetite suppressant. This miniscule beetle has become a huge political flashpoint, as vegetarians, vegans and animal rights activists take on multinational corporations for their use of (unwilling) corporeal materials. The cochineal body, the size of a buckwheat kernel, is politicized to the point of weakening the massively larger corp-oration. A body, no matter how small, becomes a signifier for individual power (life) when viewed as a discrete unit. When it can't speak, others assume to speak for it, to assert some measure of anthropomorphized individual will. Is this empathy?
Which body is more powerful, has more agency? Interestingly, a resurgence in the use of cochineal occurred as a response to demand by consumers for less artificial food dyes. Our female cochineal body is "natural red 4." Is it the responsibility of bodies with greater agency to defend or protect those with less? Does that lead to greater agency for all?
When a body as a discrete unit becomes a collection of parts, when those parts become disembodied, such as when hair falls out or skin flakes off, fluids ooze out or blood escapes the barrier of the skin, bodies then slide into the realm of the abject. The realm of the abject is a site of rejection, of refusal to identify, a place of cognitive dissonance whereby the materiality of the body overcomes its aliveness. The human instinct towards this abject materiality is repulsion, where fears of contagion, disease and death cause bodily material to be perceived as utterly untouchable. The desire for asepsis is born. Is, then, the dried and distorted cochineal beetle exoskeleton, as ground powder and/or E120, in part distasteful due to its abject qualities? How much does the influence of abjection affect our perception of ethics and vice versa? We consider a human body, when reduced to its parts, to be dehumanized. Does this material categorization extend to nonhumans, then--can insects be dehumanized? Can microorganisms be effectively dehumanized, too? Once a body is dehumanized, who then retains ownership?
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| Say it 3x. |
--> You can see more of my micrographs, captured with a DIY microscope that I built for my iPhone, on my website, here.
Another book I'd like to read: A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire
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