HOLD ON TIGHT

HE SAID, MARIE, MARIE, HOLD ON TIGHT And when we were children, staying at the archduke's, My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. ~ The Waste Land, "The Burial of The Dead", Eliot Wednesday, February 27, 2008 science and biology the day i turned 20, or was it 21?--i wasn't home, and only got the letter, on returning to singapore much later--the singapore government mailed me a letter, telling me that my organs had been preemptively donated--presumably to those in need--in the event i died and they were still operational. because we are--obviously--a democracy, of course i had a choice to refuse this by signing a form and mailing it back. but how could i refuse? in anycase, it was too troublesome to send out the form, put in a letter box, so why refuse? now i'm reading agamben: In the history of Western philosophy, this strategic articulation of the concept of life has a foundational moment. It is the moment in De Anima when, from among the various senses of the term "to live," Aristotle isolates the most general and separable one. It is through life that what has soul in it {l'animale} differes from what has not {l'inanimato}. Now this term "to live" has more than one sense, and provided any one alone of this is found in a thing we say that the thing is lviing--viz. thinking, sensation, local movement and rest, or movement in the sense of nutrition, decay and growth. Hence we think of all species of plants as also living, for they are observed to possess in themselves a principle and potentialiy through which they can grow and decay in opposite directions...This principle can be separated from the others, but not they from it--in mortal beings at least--in mortal beings at least. The fact is obvious in plants; for it is the only psychic potentiality {potenza dell'anima} they possess. Thus it is through this principle that life belongs to living things. By nutritive power, we mean that part of the soul which is also common also to plants. It is important to observe that Aristotle in no way defines what life is: he limits himself to breaking it down, by isolative the nutritive function, in order than to rearticulate it in a series of distinct and coorelated faculties and potentialities...To ask why a certain being is called living means to seek out the foundation by which living belongs to this being. That is to say, among the various senses of the term "to live," one must be separated from the others and settle to the bottom, becoming the principle by which life can be attributed to a certain being...the isolation of nutritive life (which the ancient commentators will already call vegetative) constitutes in every sense a fundamental event for Western science. (The Open, 14) i'm interested in the line "this principle [of growth, decay, the stuff of nutritive life] can be separated from the others, but not they from it." there is the suggestion that when life was conceived, the divisions that took place were not in line with the nature of life. there is a disjunct between the system and metaphysics. for agamben, the reconfiguration of life undermined life, and in the process, undermined the power of man. the latin word for bodily functions and capacities is potenza, and when it's translated, it more or less means, power. but through the process in which bodily functions are divided by science, potenza loses the original sense of power it was supposed to connote. according to agamben, the system of classification allows the state to intervene in one's biological welbeing, and for him there is an inextricable relationship between the state's protection of your body, as well as its ability to take your life--national healthcare system, biopolis hub aspirations, and death sentence, and political control go hand in hand: when the modern State, starting in the seventeenth century, began to include the care of the population's life as one of its essential tasks, thus transforming its politics into biopolitics, it was primarily by means of a progressive generalization and redefinition of the concept of vegetative life (now coinciding with the biological heritage of the nature) that the state would carry out its new vocation. And still today, in discussions about the definition ex lege of the criteria of clinical death, it is further identification of this bare life--detached from any brain activity and so to speak, from any subject--which decides whether a certain body can be considered alive or must be abandoned to the extreme vicissitude of transportation. [] The division of life into vegetal and relational, organic and animal, animal and human, therefore passes first of all as a mobile border within living man. (15) i'm not putting this here to show off or anything--i'm mostly just paraphrasing and i'm still working my way through the text. and i sound fundamentally rambly and confused. i'm putting this up here, because i'm troubled. because when i read agamben, and think about home, with its crazy, wonderful, admirable efforts at becoming a science hub, i'm worried about the link between science and power in the future. i start to wonder, whoever granted them the right to claim my organs, and to preempt my death? and then i wonder, is that question even relevant, because if i gave up my brain and kidney for r&d, that would be contributing to the trajectory of science, which must be progress (and of course "progress" itself is a really problematic word, but nonetheless). of course, if i were dead, obviously i wouldn't need my brains and kidneys and all that baggage, of course, i'd give it to someone else who needed it. when my dad was younger, he donated his bone marrow to a woman called stella. he didn't know stella, but stella had kids. his bone marrow didn't quite do it, and she died in the end. j tells me about his work in the neurology department, sorting through shipments of human brains--("sickly smelling," he laughs, "i smell like someone who has put too much perfume, being around them all day, and with brain juice all over my shirt") tagged with a name and age. i tell him about the letter i received in the mail. but the difference between those pickled brains in the university's lab, my dad who donated bone marrow, and the lungs that would be given up on my part was over the question of choice, rather than policy. posted by dawn # 10:50 AM Comments: Post a Comment << Home		[publishing] Publishers Weekly . 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HE SAID, MARIE, MARIE, HOLD ON TIGHT

And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

~ The Waste Land, "The Burial of The Dead", Eliot

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

science and biology

the day i turned 20, or was it 21?--i wasn't home, and only got the letter, on returning to singapore much later--the singapore government mailed me a letter, telling me that my organs had been preemptively donated--presumably to those in need--in the event i died and they were still operational. because we are--obviously--a democracy, of course i had a choice to refuse this by signing a form and mailing it back. but how could i refuse? in anycase, it was too troublesome to send out the form, put in a letter box, so why refuse?
now i'm reading agamben:

In the history of Western philosophy, this strategic articulation of the concept of life has a foundational moment. It is the moment in De Anima when, from among the various senses of the term "to live," Aristotle isolates the most general and separable one.

It is through life that what has soul in it {l'animale} differes from what has not {l'inanimato}. Now this term "to live" has more than one sense, and provided any one alone of this is found in a thing we say that the thing is lviing--viz. thinking, sensation, local movement and rest, or movement in the sense of nutrition, decay and growth. Hence we think of all species of plants as also living, for they are observed to possess in themselves a principle and potentialiy through which they can grow and decay in opposite directions...This principle can be separated from the others, but not they from it--in mortal beings at least--in mortal beings at least. The fact is obvious in plants; for it is the only psychic potentiality {potenza dell'anima} they possess. Thus it is through this principle that life belongs to living things. By nutritive power, we mean that part of the soul which is also common also to plants.

It is important to observe that Aristotle in no way defines what life is: he limits himself to breaking it down, by isolative the nutritive function, in order than to rearticulate it in a series of distinct and coorelated faculties and potentialities...To ask why a certain being is called living means to seek out the foundation by which living belongs to this being. That is to say, among the various senses of the term "to live," one must be separated from the others and settle to the bottom, becoming the principle by which life can be attributed to a certain being...the isolation of nutritive life (which the ancient commentators will already call vegetative) constitutes in every sense a fundamental event for Western science. (The Open, 14)

i'm interested in the line "this principle [of growth, decay, the stuff of nutritive life] can be separated from the others, but not they from it." there is the suggestion that when life was conceived, the divisions that took place were not in line with the nature of life. there is a disjunct between the system and metaphysics. for agamben, the reconfiguration of life undermined life, and in the process, undermined the power of man. the latin word for bodily functions and capacities is potenza, and when it's translated, it more or less means, power. but through the process in which bodily functions are divided by science, potenza loses the original sense of power it was supposed to connote.

according to agamben, the system of classification allows the state to intervene in one's biological welbeing, and for him there is an inextricable relationship between the state's protection of your body, as well as its ability to take your life--national healthcare system, biopolis hub aspirations, and death sentence, and political control go hand in hand:

when the modern State, starting in the seventeenth century, began to include the care of the population's life as one of its essential tasks, thus transforming its politics into biopolitics, it was primarily by means of a progressive generalization and redefinition of the concept of vegetative life (now coinciding with the biological heritage of the nature) that the state would carry out its new vocation. And still today, in discussions about the definition ex lege of the criteria of clinical death, it is further identification of this bare life--detached from any brain activity and so to speak, from any subject--which decides whether a certain body can be considered alive or must be abandoned to the extreme vicissitude of transportation. [] The division of life into vegetal and relational, organic and animal, animal and human, therefore passes first of all as a mobile border within living man. (15)

i'm not putting this here to show off or anything--i'm mostly just paraphrasing and i'm still working my way through the text. and i sound fundamentally rambly and confused. i'm putting this up here, because i'm troubled. because when i read agamben, and think about home, with its crazy, wonderful, admirable efforts at becoming a science hub, i'm worried about the link between science and power in the future. i start to wonder, whoever granted them the right to claim my organs, and to preempt my death? and then i wonder, is that question even relevant, because if i gave up my brain and kidney for r&d, that would be contributing to the trajectory of science, which must be progress (and of course "progress" itself is a really problematic word, but nonetheless). of course, if i were dead, obviously i wouldn't need my brains and kidneys and all that baggage, of course, i'd give it to someone else who needed it. when my dad was younger, he donated his bone marrow to a woman called stella. he didn't know stella, but stella had kids. his bone marrow didn't quite do it, and she died in the end.

j tells me about his work in the neurology department, sorting through shipments of human brains--("sickly smelling," he laughs, "i smell like someone who has put too much perfume, being around them all day, and with brain juice all over my shirt") tagged with a name and age. i tell him about the letter i received in the mail. but the difference between those pickled brains in the university's lab, my dad who donated bone marrow, and the lungs that would be given up on my part was over the question of choice, rather than policy.

posted by dawn # 10:50 AM

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