O futuro do corpo: tecnociência, pirataria e metamorfose

Abstract

In the present technoscientific era, the body is involved in a particular scheme: its value is directly related to its rational and technical production in scientific laboratories, where a utopian vision of corporeality has been delineated. In these, its boundaries are radically challenged and transformed, moving beyond organic materiality. Nevertheless, scientific development goes beyond its pre-set field of action, and its resulting knowledge touches society in a singular way. In our investigation, we seek to discover the relationships between laboratory experiments and what we identify as the underground scene of body technologization. Within it, we circumscribe extreme body modifications, defined as body hacktivism and body hacking, which stand for a playful and exploratory perspective, performed by scientifically-inclined amateurs whose purpose consists of amplifying a person’s sensory limits. This individual reappropriation of technologies turns out in innovations, including RFID microchip and magnetic implants, genital vibrators, engineering of titanium skin interfaces, and even robotic prostheses made with Legos. Through an empirical study undertaken from 2011 through 2013, we conducted participant observations with a number of privileged proponents of these practices in Europe, in the United States and in Brazil. Our methodology was qualitative, notably through the application of semi-directive interviews. The research focused on tattoo/piercing shops, hotels, body modification events and seminars. Our problem is to understand which body the body hackers build and design, and to view the conception of the human subject. Our principal argument is that body hackers are on record for self-production in a radical individualism that has, as a privileged analytical unit, the individual (and its growing individualization) and the self-ownership of the body as its fundamental measures. Then, the symbiosis of the individual with the environment, through new technologies, creates a distinctive perception in which an inorganic element becomes the mediator of the experience of the self and of the other. Lastly, they come together in such a way that the individual becomes a unity with it. In short, these embedded technologies not only modify the body, but also change the way of perceiving, living, and being in the world. The body hacking draws our attention to the understanding of a scientific reality: if one day nature granted man a body, to have currently, it is fundamental to overcoming this biological event, endlessly seeking its improvement, until the day that man will attain the chimera of perfection and immortality.