Body Worlds’ plastinates, the human/nonhuman interface, and feminism

Abstract

Body Worlds is a hugely popular exhibition that claims to offer a reverential and educational experience of the 'real human body' through the display of plastinated dead human bodies. However, because they are posed, staged, and composed of significant nonhuman artifice, plastinates are ambivalently 'real' as human bodies, let alone 'real' as humans. Plastinates are as much nonhuman as human, and neither category fully accounts for them. In this article, I discuss the consequences of this for feminist theory. Approaches in feminist theory that reify, either implicitly or explicitly, a human/nonhuman binary framework are challenged by plastinates. I show that locating plastinates within either ontological category, though not fully accounting for them, enables feminist critiques of the exhibition; however, these categories also paradoxically permit forms of violence with which feminists are typically concerned. In this way, I argue that plastinates force feminist thought to the very interface of the human/nonhuman divide. When applied to Body Worlds, these concepts at best form a heuristic ontological hinge whose angle is determined by ethical and political commitments, illustrating the ways in which key ontologies should be seen as political strategies more or less amenable to feminist goals, but not more or less true. I argue that what lies at the crux of this hinge, in the case of plastinates, is death, and suggest that Body Worlds demands that the interface of death with life become a key feminist concern.

Human Anatomy: A Review of the Science, Ethics and Culture of a Discipline in Transition

“…Moreover, von Hagens' philosophical claims regarding the status of plastinates have been the driving force for much academic comment [43][44][45][46]. In line with this, the exhibitions have occasioned a considerable body of scholarly work from many diferent disciplines, touching on the haunting ways in which the bodies are displayed, impressions left by the exhibitions, and the legitimacy of investigations on the human body as an object of scientiic curiosity [47][48][49][50].…”

The public display of plastinates as a challenge to the integrity of anatomy

“…It is not my purpose to retrace the central arguments of these contributions, but it is worth recalling the many disciplines from which they have come. These include ethicists (Barilan, 2006;Campbell, 2009), feminists (Kuppers, 2004;Deller, 2011;Scott, 2011), and anthropologists (Walter, 2004a,b;Linke, 2005;vom Lehn, 2006). King et al (2014) in endeavoring to summarize a range of the major themes developed by humanities scholars, emerged with a central contention that the human body as depicted in these exhibitions cannot be categorized using standard cultural binary categories of interior or exterior, real or fake, dead or alive, bodies or persons, self or other.…”

“…It is not my purpose to retrace the central arguments of these contributions, but it is worth recalling the many disciplines from which they have come. These include ethicists (Barilan, ; Campbell, ), feminists (Kuppers, ; Deller, ; Scott, ), and anthropologists (Walter, ; Linke, ; vom Lehn, ).…”

“…While there is disquiet in some anatomical circles over the public display of dissected plastinated dead bodies, there is little if any concern over the use of plastination as a teaching tool. The relationship between the two situations needs to be spelled out more explicitly than is generally the case, since elements within the current debate in the humanities cast doubt on the whole of the anatomical enterprise (Barilan, ; Scott, ). Anatomists have to consider to what degree they isolate the body from the person, and concentrate on body parts and regions at the expense of the body as a whole.…”

Dead meat: Feeding at the anatomy table of Gunther von Hagens'Body Worlds

“…With an ethical review by the California Science Center (2004/5) stressing the need for an avowed re-emphasis upon pedagogical purpose prior to its Atlantic crossing, the North American display of Body Worlds has been limited to science and natural history museums. Now enclosed within walls inscribed with quotes from Goethe and Kant, Body Worlds has sought to legitimise itself as an educational project committed to revealing the anatomical wonder of the human body, seemingly laid bare in the dissected corpse (Scott, 2011).…”