The End of the Body? Emily Martin American Ethnologist, Vol. 19, No. 1. (Feb., 1992), pp. 121-140. Stable URL: http//links jstor.org/sici?sici=0004-0496% 28 199202%2919%3A1%3C 121%3ATEOTB%3E2.0,CO%3B2-8 American Ethnologist is currently published by American Anthropological Association ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hhup:/www.jstororg/about/terms.hml. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hup:/www jstor.org/journals/anthro. hl Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, STOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals, For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @jstor.org. hupslwww jstor.org/ "Tue Jun 27 12:39:50 2006the end of the body? EMILY MARTIN—Johins Hopkins University Why is the body such an intense focus of attention in the academy today? New books rain down on us: The Body in the Mind johnson 1987), The Body and the French Revolution (Out- ram 1989), Body Invaders (Kroker and Kroker 1987), Bodies (Glassner 1988), GenderiBody! Knowledge Jaggar and Bordo 1989), and so on. Perhaps allthis attention has come about sim- ply because the body is now a central feature of contemporary Western social forms. Certainly ‘humerous historical forces could be sad to have played a role in producing the current salience ‘of the body. European state formation, creating and protecting individual rights, produced cit- izens who, one per body, voted, fought, paid taxes, and sowed their seed (Corrigan and Sayer 1985), Industrialization, which incorporated workers into factory structures separated from family and community, controlled and harnessed individual bodies in new ways. Modern forms ‘of power, deployed in the normalizing discourses of sciences such as psychiatry and biolog lead ust spill the contents of our inner lives into the waiting arms of new disciplines of know!- ‘edge. This power “seeps into the very grain of individuals, reaches right into their bodies, per- ‘meates their gestures, their posture, what they say, how they learn to live and work with other people” (Foucault, quoted in Sheridan 1980:217), Given al his, itis no wonder that the body isso often a focus of social and cultural analysis. However, would argue that there is another way of explaining why the body is such an intense focus of academic attention today. in Tristes Tropiques (1967) Lévi-Strauss described how phe- ‘nomena become the focus ofatention in the academy precisely when they are ending; he was speaking of the “primitive,” which was in the process of disappearing for the last time. Is one reason so many of us are energetically studying the body precisely that we are undergoing fundamental changes in how our bodies are organized and experienced? Some have claimed thatthe body as a bounded entity is in fact ending under the impact of commodification, frag- ‘mentation, and the proliferation of images of body parts (Kroker and Kroker 1987:20). Without discounting these claims, ! would argue they need to be seen in a particular context. In the following | will suggest that people in the United States (and perhaps elsewhere) are now ex periencing a dramatic transition in body percept and practice, from bodies suited for and con- Ceived in the terms ofthe era of Fordist mass production to bodies suited for and conceived in the terms ofthe ea of flexible accumulation. We are seeing not the end of the body, but rather the end of one kind of body and the beginning of another kind of body. the Fordist body Imagery in reproductive biology exemplifies what | mean by the Fordist body. In reproduc- tive biology, bodies are organized around principles of centralized control and factory-based production. Men continuously produce wonderfully astonishing quantities of highly valued sperm, women produce eggs and babies (though neither efficiently) and, when they are not 1990 American Ethnological Society Distinguished Lecture, presented at the spring ‘meeting, Atianta, Georgia. the end of the body? 121doing this, either produce scrap (menstruation) or undergo a complete breakdown of central Control (menopause). The models that confer order are hierarchical pyramids with the brain firmly located atthe top and the other organs ranged below. The body's products all flow out ‘over the edge of the body, through one orifice or another, into the outside world, Steady, regular ‘outputs prized above all, preferably over the entice life span, as exemplified by the production (f sperm (Martin 1987, 1991). In contemporary cell biology similar motifs are present. Inside the cel, the nucleus with its, genetic material is seen asthe privileged head ofthe cell “family The mastermolecule has become, in DNA, the unmoved mover ofthe changing cytoplasm. ln this cel- lular version ofthe Aristotelian cosmos, the nucleus is the eficient cause (as Aristotle posite the sperm to be) while the cytoplasm ike Aristole’s conception ofthe female substrate s merely the material ‘case, The nuclear DNA the esence of domination and control, Macromolecule as machomolecile. IBeldecos eta. 1988.70) “These models ofthe body seem related in form and function to early 20th-century Fordist mass- production systems, Such systems sought efficiency by means of economies of scale in pro- duction; they were geared to producing large quantities of standardized products put together from standardized components. During the establishment of Fordist forms of organization in the United States, Antonio Gramsci wrote that Fordism implied “the biggest collective effort to date to create, with un- precedented speed, and with a consciousness of purpose unmatched in history, a new type of ‘worker and a new type of man” (quoted in Harvey 1989a:126)." The success of Fords pro- duction would rely on new constructions of sexuality, reproduction, family life, moral ideals, ‘masculinity, and femininity. New habits would preserve, “outside of work, a certain psycho- physical equilibrium which [would] prevent the physiological collapse of the worker, ex- hhausted by the new method of production.” This equilibrium could become intemalized “iit [were] proposed by a new form of society, with appropriate and original methods" (Gramsci 1971:303). Some means by which a new form of society was “proposed” involved coercion, Henry Ford sent investigators into workers’ homes to intervene in their private lives. One hundred fity investigators admonished workers to practice thrity and hygienic habits and to avoid smoking, gambling, and drinking, These early social workers decided which workers “because of unsatisfactory personal habits or home conditions” were not eligible to receive the fll five-dollar wage Ford offered (Gelderman 1981:56-57). Other means, we might spec- late, could operate ata less obvious level. Pechaps scientific body imagery, capturing the es- sential features of Fordist production, was one "appropriate and original method” that could lead people to internalize a new form of society. Perhaps the two sets of interrelated imageries inthe body and in society were used to think thoughts and organize practice about time, space, substance, productivity, efficiency, and so.on, the body in late capitalism In the course of my fieldwork on contemporary concepts of the immune system, I began to wonder whether the Fordist body was being transformed.’ Far from being reminiscent of Fordist production, talk about the immune system seems to share its logic witha different social for- ‘mation, one that began to coalesce sometime in the 1970s. Are new modes of “living and thinking and feeling life” (Gramsci, quoted in Harvey 1989a:126) coming into being alongside wrenching new forms of social organization? Could the writing ofthese new modes into the body, via what we think of as scientific “truth,” be a particularly powerful way in which certain Principles are literally being internalized, making an important contribution to creating a new type of worker and a new type of man land woman], a new “shape of life" (Flax 1990:39)2 Called variously late capitalism (Emst Mandel) or the regime of flexible accumulation (David Harvey), the new formation has as its hallmarks technological innovation, specificity, and 122 american ethnologist‘pid, flexible change. It entails “flexible system production with {an] emphasis upon problem solving, rapid and often highly specialized responses, and adaptability of skills to special pur- poses”; “an increasing capacity to manufacture a variety of goods cheaply in small batches” (Harvey 1989a:155); “an acceleration in the pace of product innovation together with the ex ploration of highly specialized and small-scale market niches”; and “new organizational forms (such asthe ‘just-in-time’ inventory-lows delivery system, which cuts down radically on stocks required to keep production flow going)" (Harvey 1989a:156).* Laborers experience a speed-up in the processes of labor and an intensification in the de- stilling and reskilling that are constantly required. New technologies in production reduce turmover time dramatically, entailing similar accelerations in exchange and consumption. “Im- proved systems of communication and information flow, coupled with rtionalizations in tech- niques of distribution (packaging, inventory control, container-ization, market feed-back, et.), ‘make it possible to circulate commodities through the market system with greater speed” (Harvey 19892:285), Time and space are compressed, a the time horizons of decision making shrink and instantaneous communications and cheaper transport costs allow decisions to be effected over a global space (Harvey 1989a:147)* Multinational capital operates ina globally integrated environment: idealy, capital flows unimpeded across all borders, all points are con- ‘nected by instantaneous communications, and products are made as needed forthe momentary and continuously changing market ‘The imagery used to describe the immune system inthe body strongly evokes these descrip- tions of the operation of global capital." Inthe scientific discipline of immunology, the body is depicted as a whole, interconnected system complete unto itself. The body is seen as “an en- sineered communications system, ordered by a fluid and dispersed command-controt-intel ‘gence network” (Haraway 1989:12), One example ofthis is line drawing from a college text- ’book showing the complex communications among three types of immune system cells: mac- rophages, T cells, and 8 cell. The macrophage has taken the foreign bacterium, the antigen, inside sel, processed it, and put itback on the surface along with a protein called MHC, which marks cells in this particular body as “self.” This allows a T cell to “recognize” the foreign antigen as something to be dealt with, and it sends the first activation ‘signal’ to a B cell. At the same time the B cell recognizes the foreign material directly. Meanwhile the macrophage is sending signals to both T and B cells. Then other T cells send further signals to the B cell, leading it to dtferentiate and start producing antibody, which will eliminate the foreign matter that the macrophage ingested in the frst place. This i only a tiny portion ofthe total system of ‘communication and control involved. One further element is crucial: ata later stage, another kind of T cel is activated; called the T suppressor cell, its a “controlling mechanism that ‘urns off the proliferation of reactive cells and limits) the extent of the response” (Sell 1987:224), ‘The classroom version ofthis tends to be elaborate chalkboard sketches with countless at- rows showing signals from one cell to another in the system, accompanied by frequent state= ‘ments that all functions are interelated. This is a homeostatic, self-regulating system, complete Unto itself. This way of seeing the immune system is far from limited to an esoteric scientific ‘community. As part of a three-year research project, several graduate students and | have done ‘over 100 extensive interviews on health concepts and practices with residents of several urban neighborhoods.” We have found that people convey the systemic character of the immune sys- tem in various ways:* Bill Walters (service worker in his twenties: I don’t even thnk about the heart anymore think about ‘he immune system as being the major thing tha’ keeping the heart going inthe first place, and now that | tink about i would have to say yeah the immune system is realy. .imporant.-and the Jmmune system isn't even a vital organ, i's just an act, you know? the end of the body? 123,Peter Herman (corporate employee in his twenties: I's lke a complete... one thing fails, ! mean Bill Walters: something goes wrong, the immune system finest is kea back-up system. balance saperfect [Nancy Haris (unemployed woman inher twenties: Everything has a lotto do with it Bob Miller media representative in his twenties: t's areal complicate pat of your makeup. ‘Marie Powell awyer in her thinies: t's the whole thing Steven Baker (leacher in his sss): The immune system i the whole body, it’ nt just the tungsor the abdomen, it's, 1 mean if cut myself, does my immune system start to work right away t0 prevent Infection So is in your finger: I mean is everywhere, Next, consider what kind of production is associated withthe immune system. The essence ‘of contemporary scientific descriptions of the immune system is careful regulation of produc- tion in orientation to specific needs, not efficient production on a mass scale as inthe Fordist ‘model, When Iwas taking my frst course in immunology, I was struck by the repeated empha- sis on the “specificity” of immune system cells, both T cells and B cells. For example, as a B cell matures, it develops surface receptors that will be “committed toa single specificity ...a specificity toa single antigen.” One ofthe fist lectures in the course, on immunoglobulins (also, called antibodies), started out with “immunoglobulin facts to amaze you": There are 6 x 10" immunoglobulin molecules per ml of blood, 5 liters of blood inthe body, oF 3 10 molecules of immunoglobulin in the body. A visting lectures will say thre are 1% or 10" diferent specificities posible In theory tis posible to have 6 10" molecules of diferent specificity in each ‘lof serum. Potentially there are aloof preformed specificities fran organism to encounter. There are 2 To of these lite suckers running around. ‘The visiting lecturer late called them “tailor-made specificities, But this specificity is not a mechanical sort of specificity. Referring to a diagram of the im= ‘munoglobulin molecule, depicted as a Y-shaped molecule whose forked end can lock into antigens (foreign materia the lecturer went on: “Exquisite specificity was a term used earlier, but it is not clear now how exquisite the specificity is because of the flexibility atthe hinge region. ... They can move and lock in.” What is emphasized is specificity and flexibility, so that any possible foreign molecule or protein can be matched from the body's store of specific! flexible antibodies. In flexible accumulation, the stress is on constant innovation, which is the basis for flexible response to new markets."® One example is the story of 3M's Post-it self-stick removable notes. ‘The inventor, Art Fry, was singing in the church choir one day, struggling to keep the lite slips ‘of paper he used to mark his place in the hymnal from falling out, when he suddenly thought of using a low-tack adhesive one of his 3M colleagues had made accidentally during an ex- periment to create a superstrength adhesive, Fry thought the low-tack glue could be used to ‘make paper markers that would stick to books and papers but be removable (USAir Magazine 11990:10). At 3M the low-tack glue had been saved for several years against the possiblity that ‘someone might think of a use for it Business Week 1984). The stockpiling of glues for which ro market yet existed allowed a rapid, specific market response to a new idea. In the immune system the basis forall the “tailor-made specificities” in the body is genetic ‘mutation, which produces a constant flow of new specificities in certain immune system cell, B cells, These new specificities wait in the body like bits of potentially useful information until (Fit ever happens) a match is made with a foreign antigen. Then antibodies are produced, in Just the right amount needed, In our interviews, people have many ways of depicting the immune system as a flexible, specific response system. Here is one example: Interviewer: You mentioned antibodies. What do you see them doing? Jim Bartlet social worker in his fortes): Protect your body from anything thats going to do you harm, YoU know, that's going to make you sick. Like an atmy, I uess, that keeps some Sot of balance in 124 american ethnologistyour body, and keeps and conttols things that enter your body that shouldn't be there or that Tmight upset the equilibrium in your body, Thesense ve always had isthat antibodies... you tent just bom with a certain set of them and that’s what you have the rst of your life, but that they're ‘ery much shaped and changed by what they respond to and what they deal with, so thatf you're {exposed to hepaitis, fr instance then you are going to have hepaits antibodies forthe rest of your life, ‘because your antibodies dealt with that particular disease, andi you're sil alive that means that they {ot rid of somehow or othe, or oti under control, so that they (have that paicular imprint on ‘Your immune system That's how .. they maintain that dentty ofthat cognition...» That's jst Tike people, you know, we're very much become a part of what we confront and it changes us, you now, changes our ideas and the way we think and the way we act If. every morning when You ‘1 up and walk out your tot door, somebody smacks you Inthe face, youre going to develop a certain feaction to that, you know, hopeuly very quickly, ike use the back door. Finally, consider how time and space are depicted in descriptions ofthe immune system. With the transition from Fordism to flexible accumulation, we experience an intense phase of time-space compression that has had a dsorienting and disruptive impact upon polticaleconomic practices... Spaces of very diflrent worlds seem to collapse upon each ether, Truch asthe world's commodities ae assembled in the supermarket and all manner of subcultures get juxtaposed in the contemporary city. (Harvey 1989a:284, 301-302] ln Harvey's view, timelspace compression is a phenomenon that “so revolutionizels] the bjective qualities of space and time that we ave forced to alter, sometimes in quite radical ways, how we represent the world to ourselves" (Harvey 1989a:240). When, in our interviews about the immune system, people are asked to move in imagination to the world inside the body, they often find the experience spatially dslocating, After people have talked at length about their conceptions of the immune system, immunity, health, and illness, we then show them micrographs of greatly magnified immune system cells, such as ‘macrophages or T cells. Many people have seen these before in popular magazines or educa~ tional movies. Here is atypical response: ‘Dave Potter (accountant ia his twenties, looking at a micrograph of cells: Thats, se tome, thats what's Incredible. mean that one cells unto is own. I doesnt have a brain, your brain int connected Toil and W's gots own, Gad! Is so incredible, 1 mean is phenomenal! I's ike being in wo diferent worlds Interviewer: Really? Dave Potter: Yeah, I mean, eventhough I've seen all these kinds of things before and ealize that these are the exact same kinds of things that are in my body, ssl distanced somehow. | mean these cells 83cton ther own, you know, there’ no connection between being a human and having, there's no con: nection between me being 2 conscious human being and ths cel that's inside me ‘The self has retreated inside the body, isa witness to ise, a tiny figure in a cosmic landscape, which is the body. This scene is one that is both greatly exciting and greatly bewildering. Dramatic forms of spatial disorientation are particularly apparent in the large numbers of people who interpret scientific images as visions of something colossal and distant inside us: these images look, as Nancy Harris puts it, "ke star wars,” “like space sharks," “like the sun and the moon.” Consider the remarks of John Marcellin, a community organizer in his fortes: sunny... when you think about the inside of your body think about outer space. 1 ike those are the only things that tok like this, you know, theyre that faraway from you. Its weird because outer spacelike, way out there and your body is us right here, but i's abou the same, i'the same thing, ‘No wonder it is disconcerting: the unimaginably small and the unimaginably large coalesced in the same image, agency residing in cells, the person becoming an observer of the agency of ‘others inside him or herself. The “I” who used to wear the body like a closely fitting set of Clothes is now miniaturized, and is dwarfed by its body. The "I" is made a passive and pow- erless witness to the doings of the components of the body. Somewhere in the system lies agency; the ”” can only watch." {tis much less clear to me what is happening with representations of time. In popular texts about the immune system itis striking how many different historical periods are “plundered” to depict the workings of this postmodern instantaneous information deployment system. Here the end of the body? 125are some typical images: an ancient city Jewler 1989), an ancient walled castle (Kobren 1989), ancient Japanese warriors (Schindler 1988), conventional contemporary arms (Brownlee 1990, Lentola 1984)" Describing the immune system in our interviews, people not infrequently juxtapose images taken from different time periods. This person, for example, switches from a current pastoral scene to an ancient city: Interviewer: Can you describe 1 me what you think’s going on inthe body af someone with AIDS? Jim Baret: Wel, guess, | wsuall think of tas ikea huge bam... that’s gt big doors on either end and thisbar sin ir, rain, you know, tornados, wild animals, you know, whatever. That there's nothing to stop, nothing to stop you know, anything can come in. [Deschption ofa rend ofa friend who has AIDS. So AIDS [tl would seem just renders you helpless to things that, in the past you had, hike ‘maybe, iyo think of 3 big medieval ty that all fa sudden does t have any walls ray moa or any, anything, Can come along and just knock you out Perhaps these images convey a sense of being unmoored in time, unable to unify past, present, and future, a disorientation in time to match a disorientation in space.'* | am suggesting thatthe science of immunology is helping to render a kind of aesthetic or architecture for our bodies that captures some ofthe essential features of flexible accumulation, Presumably these images in science developed in complex interaction with many changing, social forms and practices. Here | have space only to point out that the era of flexible accu- ‘mulation is usually said to have begun inthe early 1970s (with some seeds present in the 1960s) (Harvey 1989a:141~172). The ideas in immunology that! have discussed emerged at roughly the same time. It was not until the late 1960s that the concept of an immune system as such ‘existed (Moulin 1989), and it was not until the early 1970s that departments of immunology ‘existed in American or other universities. Knowledge of how specificity in antibodies works ‘came at this time too: Edelman and Porter shared the Nobel prize for studies of the structural basis of immunological specificity in 1972 (Silverstein 1989:134—135).'* To see futher complexities ofthe late 20th-century body, we must turn to a diferent picture, ‘one that exists alongside the flexible response system | have outlined. This is a portrait of the body as a nation-state, organized around a hidden discourse of gender, race, and class, the “hierarchical, localized organic body" (Haraway 1989:14)."* In this picture, which is aught in biology classes and conveyed in the popular media, the boundary between the body ("self”) and the external world (“nonself") is rigid and absolute: “At the heart of the immune system is, the ability to distinguish between self and nonsel. Virualy every body cell carries distinctive ‘molecules that identify it as self” (Schindler 1988:1). These molecules are class 1 MHC pro- teins, present on every nucleated cell in an individual's body and different from every other individual's. One popular book calls these our “trademarks” (Owyer 1988:37). The mainte- nance of the purity of self within the borders of the body is seen as tantamount tothe mainte- nance ofthe self: chapter called "The Body under Siege,” in the popular book on the immune system In Self Defense, begins with an epigraph, ‘To be or not to be, that is the question’ (Wiliam Shakespeare)” (Mizel and Jaret 1985:1).* ‘As one of the interviews | quoted hints, talk about the immune system's maintenance of a clear boundary between self and nonself is often accompanied by a conception of the nonself ‘world as foreign and hostile.” Our bodies are faced with masses of cells bent on our destruc tion: “to fend off the threatening horde, the body has devised astonishingly intricate defenses” (Schindler 1988:13). As a measure of the extent of this threat, contemporary popular publications" depict the body as the scene of all-out war between ruthless invaders and deter ‘mined defenders: “Besieged by a vast array of invisible enemies, the human body enlists a rematkably complex corps of internal bodyguards to battle the invaders” (Jaret 1986:702). A site of injury is “transformed into a batle field on which the body's armed forces, hurling them- selves repeatedly at the encroaching microorganisms, crush and annihilate them” (Nilsson 1985:20), 126 american ethnologist‘Small white blood cells called granulocytes are “kept permanently atthe ready for a blitz krieg against microorganisms” and constitute the “infantry” of the immune system: “multi- tudes fallin battle, and together with their vanquished foes, they form the pus which collects in wounds” (Nilsson 1985:24). Larger macrophages are another type of white blood cell, the ‘armoured unit” of the defense system: “These rll forth through the tissues, ... devouring, ‘everything that has no useful role to play there” (Nilsson 1985:25). Another par of the immune system, the complement system, can “perforate hostile organisms so that their lives trickle toa halt” (Nilsson 1985:24). The components of the complement system function as" ‘magnetic mines.’ They are sucked toward the bacterium and perforate it, causing i to explode’ (Nilsson. 1985:72). When the system “comes together in the right sequence, it detonates like a bomb, basting through the invader's cell membrane” (Jaret 1986:720).Certain T lymphocytes, whose technical scientific name isthe “killer cells,” are the “immune system's special combat units inthe war against cancer”; killer cells “strike,” “attack,” and assault” (Nilsson 1985:96, 98, 100), “The killer T cells are elentless. Docking with infected cells, they shoot lethal proteins atthe cell membrane. Holes form where the protein molecules hit, and the cell, dying, leaks outs insides’ (Jaroff 1988.59). Not surprisingly, identities involving gender, race, and class are present in this war scene Compare two categories of immune system cells, macrophages, which surround and digest foreign organisms, and T cells, which kill by transferring toxin to them, The macrophages are a lower form of cell, evolutionarily, and are even found in such primitive organisms as worms (Roit, Brostoff, and Male 1985:2.1); they are called a “primeval tank corps” (Michaud, Fein- stein, and Editors 1989:3), T cells are more evolutionarily advanced and have higher functions such as memory (Jaroff 1988:60; Roitt,Brostoff, and Male 1985:2.5). is only these advanced cells which “attend the technical colleges ofthe immune system" (Nilsson 1985:26) ‘There is clearly a hierarchical division of labor here, one that is to some extent overlaid with ‘our gender categories. Specifically, there are obvious female associations with the engulfing and surrounding that macrophages do and obvious male associations withthe penetrating or injecting that killer T cells do. In addition, many scholars have pointed out the frequent sym- bolic association of the female with lower functions, and especially with a lack of or lesser degree of mental functions. Beyond this, macrophages are the cells that ate the “housekeepers” (Jaret 1986) ofthe body, ‘leaning up the dir and debris, including the “dead bodies" of both self and foreign cells (one immunologist called them “litle drudges”)" “The fist defenders to arive would be the phagocytes la category of “eating” cells that includes mac rophages|—the scavengers ofthe system. Phagocytes constantly scour the tetris of our bodies, alert tovanything that seems out of place. What they find they engulf and consume. Phagocytes are aot ‘choosy, They willeat anything suspicious thal they find inthe Bloodsveam, tissues, or Iymphalic sytem var 986.715), Given their uncultivated origins, it should not be surprising that after eating, macrophages “burp”: “After la macrophagel finishes its meal, it burps out pieces of the enemy and puts them ‘out on its surface” (Michaud, Feinstein, and Editors 1989:6). As macrophages feed, they may be described as “angry” or in a “feeding fury,” an image combining uncontrolled emotions with an obliterating, engulfing presence, both common cultural ascriptions of females. In ad- dition, as is often the case with the lower orders of human females, the macrophage harbors disease. Itis the macrophage that isthe reservoir of HIV. “Unlike T 4 cells, the macrophage is ‘not killed by HIV. t may serve as a reservoir forthe virus" (Gallo and Montagnier 1989) Gender might not be the only overlay on this division of labor. Racial overtones could be there as well although 1 have less convincing evidence for them. Macrophages are the cells that actually ea other cells belonging tothe category self” and so engage in a form of "can- nibalism.” Cannibalism soften associated with the attribution of a lower animal natureto those ‘who engage in it “Arens 1975). In immunology, macrophages are seen as feminized in some theend of the body? 127‘ways but as simply “uncivilized” in other ways. These “cannibals” are indiscriminate eaters, barbaric and savage in their willingness to eat any manner of thing at all. Sometimes macro- phages are feminized “housekeepers,” and sometimes they seem to be racially marked, as ‘when they are described as “roving garbage collectors” (Brownlee 1990:50) ‘A more certain reason forthe lowliness of macrophages is that they lack the highly valued characteristic (given a regime of flexible accumulation) of specificity. In a class lecture, heard that macrophages are “the dumb cells ofthe immune system. They don’t have any specificity, while T cells do have specificity.” To explore the hierarchy of cells further, we need to look at another immune system cell, the Ball. B cells are clearly ranked far above the lowly macrophage. They are not educated in the college ofthe thymus, but they are “educated” in the bone marrow (Dwyer 1988:47) and they have enormous specificity. However, they rank below the T cell, which is consistently termed the “orchestrator” of the immune response and which activates B cells. In one popular book, the T cell is said to give the B cell "permission" to attack invading organisms (Owyer 1988:47). (This assertion is frequently made in spite ofthe interlocking nature of all the elements of the system, B cells exist in two stages, virgin or immature 8 cells and, when stimulated by antigen ofthe right specificity, mature 8 cells. Mature B cells are the cells that, with T cell permission,” rapidly produce antibodies against invading antigen. A B cell stars out a virgin, is stimulated by the right nonself antigen and the T cell, and thereupon starts to produce antibodies like mad. Inone lecture heard, Tcells were said to sidle up” to 8 cells asa par of their orchestration (of B cell responses to antigen. think that in most American courtship behavior, it would be the ‘man who sidled up to the woman. So this suggests that 8 cells are sometimes feminized but rank much higher inthe hierarchy than the lowly macrophage. In the B cell, then, we-may hhave a kind of upper-class female, a suitable partner for the top-ranked T cell. Far below her in terms of class and race is the macrophage, angry, scavenging, engulfing, housekeeping, and harboring disease, The cartoon on a recent cover ofthe technical journal Immunology Today provides clear ‘evidence forthe picture I am drawing. This cartoon depicts a B cell with long eyelashes and high heels silently taking orders from a T cell called a gammaidelta cell, drawn as a doctor ‘with a stethoscope and a hypodermic needle, The gammaldelta T cell i kicking the B cel. In the next ame the gammaidelta T cell kicks another kind of T cell, one unmarked by any adorn- ‘ments, but this T cell registers a verbal protest, “Ouchi” Inthe final frame, two gamma/delta T Cells are shown standing on top of a macrophage, while one of them shouts into a megaphone, Come on—the action’s here!!” (Born etal. 1990). So we have T cells, masculine and high-ranking; B cells, feminine and high-ranking: and ‘macrophages, feminine, perhaps racially marked, and low-ranking on all counts. What is miss- ing? Low-ranking males, revealing by their invisibility in this system (even as they seem to be invisible" in the U.S. social structure) how salient a system of race and class isto the under- standing of relationships among these cells.” In this system, gendered distinctions are not limited to male and female, they also encompass the distinction heterosexual and homosexual, T cells convey aspects of male potency, cast as heterosexual potency. There is evidence that T cells are for many researchers the virile heroes ‘of the immune system, highly rained commandos who have been selected for and then edu- cated in the technical college ofthe thymus gland. T cells are referred to as the “master regu- lators of the immune system” (Sell 1987:26). Some T cells, killer cells, are masculine in the old-fashioned mold of a brawny, brutal he-man: in a mail advertisement for a book on the immune system, we are told, “You owe your life to tis little guy, the Rambo of your body's immune system.” Other Tcells,T4 cells, have a different kind of masculinity, one focused on abilities required in the contemporary world of global corporations, especially strategic plan- ring and corporate team participation. The T 4 cell is often called the quarterback of the Immune system, because he orchestrates everything else and because he is the brains and 128 american ethnologist‘memory ofthe team. Asit s putin one popular source, “besides killer T-cells... there are also helper [T 4] and suppressor T-cells. Somebody has to make strategic decisions” (Michaud, Feinstein, and Editors 1989:10). A popular manual on the immune system, Fighting Disease, clinches the heterosexuality of the T cel: In order to slip inside a cell, a viru has to remove its protein coat, which it leaves outside on the cell ‘membrane. The vital coat hanging outside signals the passing T cell that ial hanky panky i pong on Inside. Like the jealous husband who spots strange jacket inthe hall closet and knows what's going on inthe upstairs bedroom, the T cell takes swift action. bumps againstthe body cell with the vit inside and perorates [Michaud Feinstein, and Editors 1989:8) contradictory formations So far | have described two coexisting “bodies”: a body organized as a global system with no internal boundaries and characterized by rapid flexible response, and a body organized around nationhood, warfare, gender, race, and class. In logical terms, these two bodies are Contradictory ifthe system were really self-regulatory, there would be no “waste” for the mac- rophage to clean up; “waste” could be described as nourishment instead. Ifthe system were really a complex interlocking series of feedback loops, then no one would be more in charge than anyone else; T4 cells could be seen as playing their part in the system but as being no ‘moce or less important than macrophages. In the world outside the body, there are concrete reasons why two contradictory formations lke these would coexist. David Harvey writes ofthe ‘geopolitical dangers attached tothe rapidity of time-space compression’ Te serious diminution of the power of individual nation states over fiscal and monetary polices, for ‘example, has not been matched by any parallel shift towards an interationalization of politics. Indeed there are abundant sign that localiam and nationalism have become stronger precisely because ofthe ‘quest for the security that place always oes inthe midst ofall the siting tha flexible accumulation implies 11989:306) ‘Another reason relates more directly to the particular form flexible accumulation has taken inthe United States. In the United States, the establishment of global capital has been accom- panied by dramatic restructuring. Harrison and Bluestone describe how heightened interna- tional economic competition after the mid-1960s led to a profit squeeze. They argue that al- though some sectors of U.S. industry undertook experiments in new forms, changing the scale and manner of work, the prevalent response was industrial restructuring. Among other things, companies abandoned core businesses, invested ofshore, shifted capital into overtly speculative ventures, subcon: tracted work o low-wage contractors here and abyoad, demanded wage concessions trom thet em ployees and substituted parttime and other forms of contingent labor for fulltime workers. [1988] Intandem, many policies ofthe federal government added to constraints on and containment of wages. The result is what Therborn (1986) has called “Brazilianization”: mass unemployment as a ‘permanent feature; atthe bottom the permanently unemployed and the marginals, on welfare (or, in the United States, destitute inthe midlle the regularly employed (but often underem: ployed), increasingly divided by enterprise, sector, gender, and race; and atthe top the few of increasing wealth and income (Hall 1988). Even among middle managers, restructuring and ‘mergers have produced massive dislocations (Harrison and Bluestone 1988:13, 38). As the in- ternational flow of capital and communication systems link the United States to global systems, borders and cleavages inside this nation-state have become deeper and wider (Davis 1984). How would such a context shed light on the two organizational forms | have argued coexist inthe body? The key lies in the hallmark ofthe late 20th-century U.S. body, flexibility: the ability to respond to constant change in the environment and the nature and kind of work one does in a context of widespread fear of mortal loss of employment, status, housing, and health theendof the body? 129| came upon one example of this in a quintessential postmodem architectural spectacle, Bal timore’'s famous Harborplace, the waterfront tourist and financial attraction developed by the Rouse Company. A local publication brought to light that some ofthe retailers (Balimoxe res iden) were being forced to give up their leases i they refused to change product lines fre- quently. One retailer, Cathy Crymes, explained how she had built her hobby of collecting Stuifed bears into a successful Harborplace shop. After seven yeas she was tld by the Rouse company, in july, "We are tied of bears, We want you to get rd ofall your bears by October 1... We think bears are passé and your sales are down. We would like you to stay but we'd like you to come up witha new idea, lke a store selling sweatshts or sweater.” She said,“ know nothing about selling sweatshits People look at me and they know t'm the Bear Lady" (Macsherty 1990:8-10). The lexibilty required of Cathy Crymes is entailed by the increasing specificity of marketing. n an atic explaining how Harboeplace was “ine-uning isla spokesman forthe Intemational Council of Shopping Centers was quoted: “There's no such thing as a mass market anymore... Developers are tailoring thei retail mixes to atvactin- creasingly specific groups of people” (Tyner 1990a). Inthe T9th century fatigue “provided the key tothe efficient tization ofthe body's energies by determining its internal limit” Rabinbach 1986; see also 1982) in our day, flexibility may play a similar role. A Harborplace merchant sai: “In this business, change is what i’ about... you don't upgrade your concept and your merchandising and your presentation ‘every thee to five years, you're going tobe behind the 8-ball and not abreast ofthe market place” (Macsherry 1990:10). Lacking flexibility of that kind, people face ominous boundaries close at hand. Even for middle-class people, business failure i all to common; the Bear Lady lost her lease From the pot of view of almost any worker in such an environment, the menacing vision ‘of falling over fearful internal borders into unemployment, underemployment, or destitution ‘would give “lexibilty” a compelling character Another local publication, laudatory of Har- boeplace. included the comment “In this Darwinian environment, the only constant is change ‘As one local retail consultant says, ‘The very people who make malls like Harborplace work die there’ Cryer 1990b:10).” There may be productive relationships between, on the one hand, concepts ofthe body with its immune system poised for flexible response to fearful bi ‘logical treats at any moment and, on the oer, a word that now requizes “flexibility” asthe price of earning a wage." The “flexible specificity” inthe scientific descriptions of antbodies and the excited statement inthe interview | already quoted—"The immune system is just ike people, you know; we're very much become a part of what we confont and it changes us IF -every morning when you get up and walk out your front dor, somebody smacks you in the face, you'e going to develop a certain reaction to that, you know, hopefully very quickly, like use the hack door”—exemplify the bodily dimension of how we experience the worl, and they give evidence ofa new bodily percept emerging in the present. When Fordism was becoming established in the United States, deliberate efforts were made to transform workers’ concepts of sexuality and domestic life. Ae similar processes occurring, today? Earlier | described both the virile, heterosexualized T cell and the dominance hierarchy among immune system cells. These descriptions take on a stark significance in light of the fact that HIV is killing off precisely the high-ranking cell, the masculinized T cells, in gay men and minority drug users (the demographic groups now most affected by HIV in Baltimore). HIV especially depletes the T 4 cel, the particular cell that is compared to that most masculine of figures, the quarterback in football, because it directs and orchestrates the other T cells (Red- field and Burke 1989:64)." Afterall as one popular book on the immune system puts it, "We are not all born equal when it comes tothe T cel system” (Dwyer 1988:46). 130 american ethnologist“The way HIV is seen as destroying the virile T cell made me wonder whether the men at the hospice where | volunteer as an AIDS "buddy" experienced the weakening of the body as a defeat on several different fronts. My buddy training manual explain, “Think of lots of rebels and a government dictatorship protected by the army. AS soon as your immune system gets impaired (your army dies all the diseases which you have been carrying for years can run amok the rebels seize power)” (Washington HIV News 1988, quoted in Health Education Resource (Organization 1986). Iteemed possible that the weakening ofthe body these men experienced \was being linked in scientific language to a loss of heterosexual potency. It was not simply that you were no longer a ‘man but that your body as a centralized nation-state had losis virility ‘had these thoughts in mind before my buddy, Mark Scot, was presented at grand rounds. Grand rounds are elaborate, formal presentations of cases, held ina lage lecture hall. though Mark was extremely il, recovering from a serious toxoplasmosis infection, he was elated at the prospect of being presented at grand rounds. He told me the week before that he was the one and only patient his doctor, John Aubrey, wanted to present. He said that he was going to ty tw get across the patient's need to be responsible for his own illness, no matter how sick, He ‘wanted to convey the importance of not taking a doctor's word for it and of learning as much as possible by asking questions. He was planning to start off with a funny but risqué joke, the panda joke, so thatthe audience could see he had a sense of humor. When he told me this, the was in the hospital, unable to walk or even sit up. Three days later—by dint of incredible determination—he was shaved, with afresh haircut, dressed in a dark double-breasted sult, leaning on the arm of Aubrey as they walked across the stage at grand rounds. Far from beginning with the panda joke, Mark was asked a series of detailed questions in which the various stages of his disease were constructed entirely in terms of the progressive elimination of T 4 cells Dr. Aubrey: Mr. Scott has an identical win, and he underwent a series of leukocyte infusions from the identical twin, fllowed by bone marrow wansplantation Before the bone marrow transplantation, do ‘you know what the sats of your immune system wast ‘Mark Scot: Yes do, Dr. Aubrey: What was it Mark Scott: My T 4 count was 60. Dr, Aubrey: 60.OK. The normal value at that laboratory was 600, 800? So you had less than 10 percent ‘ofthe normal numberof helper cll. Had you had that test done belore? Mak Scot looks puzzled 1. Aubrey: The T cell count, before you went to NIM Mark Scott: In 1984 twas norma Dr, Aubrey: So over a petiod of thee of four years, the helper T cells, the primary target of HIV, had fallen from near normal, a near normal range, down toa very low range of aT 4 count of 60. What happened with bone marrow transplantation? Mark Scott: believe to this day that got a boost. was very trong fora while after the bone marrow. went back io college and studied word procesing, and was making a4 point while working 2 ullsime Job. Only in the last sie months was i Dr. Aubrey: And in terms ofthe laboratory evaluation that they di. clearly functionally you did ‘exerely wel. You were working fulltime, functioning entirely normally The laboratory test that they {id to monitor you, what did that show? [Mark Scott shakes his head uncomprehendingly. 1. Aubrey: The T cells, dd they change ‘Mark Scot: My T cells went up after the bone marrow to about 180 and stayed there fr about three ‘months before coming back downto 60. 1s. Aubrey: So there was a transient increas in your helper T cells, but functionally you felt fine, Mark's condition was relentlessly defined by his T 4 cell count, and in the process, given the significance of T 4 cells in the armamentarium ofthe body, Mark was defined as impotent and the end of the body? 131feeble. The force ofthis drama could not have struck deeper when later many doctors came down onto the stage to congratulate Mark and his doctor: they said that Mark's presence had “given AIDS a human face.” Could this scientific imaging of the body be seen as an aspect of secular opposition to ho- ‘mosexuality?” There are broad social currents inthe United States today, especially inthe New Right, that seek to “restore heterosexual patriarchy, the control of men over their wives and childzen’ Homosexuality is characterized by “pro-‘amily” representatives as “unnatural,” “evil and psychol ‘cally "perverse; but male homosexuality is even more dangerous than female, in the "pr-tamily View, because i signals a breakdown of “masculinity” isellor what one rightwing wleologue calls the “male spin,” or the “male principle.” [Petchesky 1981:231], (Or this diminishment ofthe homosexual body might be related to ideas brought to life with the weakening ofthe liberal state and of the state's responsibility to provide for social welfare ‘needs. Withdrawal of government support from social services of all kinds makes the nuclear family seem to be the only source ofthese glues tothe social fabric, and conservative efforts to ‘buttress the heterosexual family ideologically may reflect this perception. The depiction of bbody cells that privileges some as heterosexually potent has a part to play here and operates at particularly subtle, invisible, ad therefore insidious evel may be that while flexibility in adjusting to retraining, deskilling, part-time work, home- based work, periodic unemployment, relocation, changing product lines, downward mobility, and all the other ways restructuring bears on wage earners is desirable, flexibility in domestic arrangements is threatening to this very restructuring.” Part-time work, home-based work, er- Vice sector work without health benefits or retirement benefits, and unemployment themselves seem to entail dependence on the family to fill in the gaps in order to enable the workforce 10 reproduce itself." Contemporary conservative publications are filled with exactly this logic:"* Teachers at uban schools speak of chaotic, scattered farilies,of goss parental responsibility, ofsmall schoolchildren who witness open sexual activity at home. The evele perpetuates itself across gene tions a teenage mother, abused as a child, cannot read, write, add or subtract. Shes pregnant with her thid child and living on welfare. She has 20 sls, 2er0 work habits, zero future. Work ta fastfood resiaurant seems beyond her capacity. Shei neglecting her 3-year oi, who soften sick and il-ed, She “hunts the chil off to relatives as often as she can “These por neighborhoods ard families are radically diferent rom ther counterparts of two decades _ago. People tal now ofan inability to cope with life's most rudimentary demands, such simple things 2 geting up in the moming to go to work. idleness and responsibilty pave the tragic road to self. “estucton: teenage pregnancy lng tem welfare dependence, drugs, crime, prison and death Loch: head 1989:10, 1) IW restructuring makes the heterosexual family seem to some a necessary prop to the social fabric, restructuring also makes some people seem superfluous. Flexible accumulation goes along with high levels of "structural unemployment” and an increase in a labor market periph- ‘ery that lacks job security (Harvey 1989a:149-150). These conditions affect disadvantaged .10ups disproportionately: not all groups seem equally superfluous. A growing sense that some. r0ups of people are superfluous must surely be related tothe recent increase in intolerance in the United States, a willingness to openly express racist, clasist, homophobic, or misogynistic sentiments and act on them. The poor are sad to have become “American untouchables” (Ko- 201 1990). Young black males are said to have become an “endangered species" (Corey 1990) We read in the paper of a student “hospitalized speechless after racial threats”: “A [black] freshman at Emory University was found in her dormitory room curled in the fetal position and Unable to speak ... following the latest episode in a reported campaign of racial teror against her” (Smith 1990) Here is how this climate eels to John Marcellino, a community leader in a chronically poor, mostly white neighborhood in Baltimore: {The person in charge of commercial redevelopment this areal says the area, the problems inthis are, Will ot improve unt this community changes, until the people who live here ae no longer here. And you wont get rid ofthe drug abuse or the prostitution or the crime or stuff unl the people wh 132 american ethnologistete are no longer here. And that ta me isthe same as the underclass thing, disposable people... As soon as they ca figure outa need for us, they'l get rid of us Interviewer: Whats the need for you right pow? John Marcelino: We sill make money for somebody or another. They sill eed us some, lke they needed people to come up out ofthe south to work nthe mills, zo they attract them all up, Now thee’s rot as much need forthe people to workin the mills they need some people inthe service economy, they try to retain. But not theye no use, they put you in jal, they choke you of so that you can’t make a living doing anything ese so they get sid of you, or you know, hopetlly youl go Backto Vina or somewhere ee, ight You know, oul awl ima crack you won't have cen corsomething, ‘As with secular opposition to homosexuality, scientific imagery has a role to play here too, We know that 19th-century anthropology had a view of the natural order ofthe world which could be used to justify denying women the privileges of citizenship in the Enlightenment proj- ‘ect and to justify the colonization, enslavement, and exploitation of people of color. lf women and people of color were simply lower on the evolutionary scale, doing them harm became less bothersome (Stocking 1987:230-237). In present-day circumstances—with poor whites 28 “disposable people,” poor blacks as an “endangered species,” the Secretary of Health and Human Services compating the calamitous situation of blacks in the United States today to slavery (Corey 1990)—-the popularization of the notion of a world within the body with cells ranked by gender, race, and class is not trivial, Learning that our bodies are made up of hier archically ranked kinds of cells, with dumb, uncouth, barbaric “females” at the bottom and smart, educated, civilized, executive “males” atthe top, has its part to play in showing us why itisall right to think some kinds of people are not as worthy of life in human society as others >> In describing a “collective effort” that is pushing us toward new modes of living, thinking, nd feeling, {have only hinted at how these modes actually get instantiated in our lives. Part of the full story would obviously involve the “‘media’” in Raymond Williams’ social sense (1977). Many ofthe images I have discussed are from newspapers, magazines, or mass market books, and it would be easy to add images from films such as The Miracle of Life and The Fighting Edge, episodes of "L.A. Law,” innumerable television specials or talk shows, and amusements such as the “Wonder of Life” ride at Epcot Center near Disney World.* ‘Another part of the story would involve individuals or groups who are explicit advocates of links between biological knowledge of the body and social control. For example, James D. ‘Watkins, who was the head of Ronald Reagan’s AIDS commission, said in an interview: We have an opportunity to restructure what a healthy lifestyle i all about... [To often we assume a chil in our society will be heathy. (Ths) may have been true years ago, but society i changing ‘One third of youngsters today ae born into poverty. Now we are hardening an underclass and there s 8 sttong overlay between that underclass and AIDS. Its mainly Hispanic and Black Americans, AIDS brings into focus a variety of flaws in our system... T]he job of educators then isto hep people learn in fundamental way about haman biology and their own bodies so they can posses ielong strates forhealthy wholesome iestyles, The interviewer broke in: "You are talking about trying to get at healthcare problems by getting students to understand the nature of human biology!2” And Watkins answered, “Absolutely” «Newman 1988). Watkins put it all together: the social control entailed in disseminating bio- logical knowledge of the body; the fear and threat of AIDS, linked to “flaws in our system,” among them homosexuals, people of color, and people living in poverty {have emphasized the wrenching effects ofa new mode of being. Hence my focus has been ‘on how people stretch and are stretched to adjust, rather than on the other side ofthis process, always potentially present: how people revise and bend ideas and events to fit their circum stances. Mark Scott used grand rounds to flatter and please a doctor whose experimental pro- tocol he wanted to join; AIDS activists have produced films and publications, among, them Ecstatic Antibodies: Resisting the AIDS Mythology (Boffin and Gupta 1990), which create more ‘enabling body imagery.” John Marcellino has organized the “disposable people" in his com- ‘munity into alliances with people from poor black neighbothoods and Native American groups the end of the body? 133in the city and elsewhere; Cathy Czymes has relocated her stufed bear shop outside Hatbor- place. These actions might well turn out to be examples of the kinds of political resistance, based on reimaging, relocation, and rearrangement of alliances, that are possible and effica- ious in a regime of flexible accumulation (Harvey 1989b:274) * I have sketched a transformation in embodiment, from Fordist bodies held by disciplined ‘order in time and space and organized for efficient mass production, to late capitalist bodies leaming flexible response in rapidly collapsing time and space, bodies which nonetheless con- tain (contradictorily increasingly sharp and terible internal divisions. lam suggesting that there are changes afoot in our embodied dispositions, changes that will surely take importantly di ferent forms among diferent people and groups. We are experiencing not so much the end of the body asthe ending of one organizational scheme for bodies and persons and the beginning, ‘of another. The depth of the transformations that are entailed accounts for atleast some of the academy's justifiable fascination with the subject of the body, even as the body’s borders ‘aver, is internal parts become invested with agency, and its responses become ever more flexibly specific. notes ‘Acknowledgments. Jonathan Parry (198) w2s he inspiration for my tile. This article is revision of the Distinguished Lecture I gave a the 1990 meeting ofthe American Ethnological Society, which was og rized around the theme The Bodin Society and Culture.” For erticism andeditoval advice, hank Don Brenneis, Ashraf Ghani Erica Schoenberger, and Sharon Stephens “The conceen of American industrialists was to ‘maintain the continuity of the physical and mescular-nervous efficiency ofthe worker Iwas! in their Interests to have a stable, skilled laboue ore, a permanently welladjusted comptes, ecausethe human Complex the collective worker ofan enterprise also a machine which cannot, without considerable Toss be taken to pieces too often and renewed with single new parts Gramct 1971:303) The fieldwork refer to involves participant observation in a university department of immunology, an immunology research lab, several urban neighborhoods, several community organizations dedicated to the AIDS criss, an AIDS hospice, and the AIDS ward of an inner-city nutsing home. The argument below ‘rawsonalimted segment ofthe ongoing esearch Other work n progres wll describe the impacto the ‘AIDS crisis on immunology and the impact of grassroots political organizations dealing with HIV infection ‘on scientific research, *See Schoenberger(1987:207) on just-intime inventories. Silver and Peterson 1985 sa handbook for ‘making decisions on what kindof inventory system to ap “As the barriers of time and space collapse, they crash down with tere violence upon the bodies of ‘women, as depicted in films suchas David Lynch's Blue Velvet. see Poce and Sabel (1984) fr a different analysis ofthe relationship between the global division of labor and flexible specialization meson (1584) and Harvey (1989) have a varity of ways of understanding how the social formation ‘of at capitals can relate to such things a architecture, at, and literature. Aecording to Jameson, post- ‘modern forms reveal the “cultural logic” of late capitalism: they are the “intemal and superstuctural ‘expression ofa whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world they instantiate a “cultural dominant” anew systemic cultural norm,” a "dominant cultural logic o¢ Ihegemonic norm” (1984°57) They are a"iguation ofthe whole world sytem of present-day mul ‘ational capitalism’ (198479), and they are an approach to 3 representation of anew realy, a peculiar ‘new fom of teal, a kindof mimesis of reality (198488). For Harvey these fem are alo mimeti. "In the lst instance” they ae produced bythe experience of time-space compression, itself the product of processes inflexible accumblation(19892:336~ 44). In the following section tam obviously indebted to the kinds of paters Jameson and Harvey have seen in architecture and ater forms, even though I peer otto se the econoenc realm 35 simply determinant of cultural forms The neighborhoods embrace diferences of class, ethnicity, gender, and age, Monica Schoch-Spana, ‘Bjorn Claeson, Karen Sue Toussig, and Wendy Richardson are the graduate assistants doing these iter- views. The discussions focus on people's concep of health and illness, understanding of mmm, re actions fo HIV disease, and responses to a variety of community and urban issues. Neighborhood Iter. ‘ews arr except haperstance wih people det ime inte AIDS epee personaly or professionally "The names attached tothe quotations tom interviews are pseudonyms they a followed by an indi cation ofthe person's age and occupation 134 american ethnologist° Similar seltsfficient wholes ae found in other contemporary aesthetic forms. Consider Jameson's de: scription ofthe Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. The Bonaventure “aspires to being atotal space, acom- plete word, a kind of miniature city” (1984-81). To this end, Is entrances and exis are oblique, hard to Find, and confusing (1984:81), "The hotel's las skin repels the city outside... (Te glass skin achieves peculiar and placeless dissociation othe Bonaventure Irom ts neighbourhood; itis nol even an exterior, imasmuch as when you seek to look atthe hot’ outer walls you cannot see the hotel self but only the distorted images of everthing that surrounds i” (198482). "It does not wish to be pat ofthe ety, but rather ts equlvaent and is replacement or substitu” (1984:B1) ""Kash’s Perpetua Innovation (1989) i2"clear and tough minded look (jacket lap at the necessity for the United States to move beyond industrial society, with is standardized products manufactured on 3 ‘massive scale by the dividing of production ofthe whole into production ofthe pats, and the components ‘ofthe parts, ll designed for maximum efficiency. The book urges the United Sates to become a "symtatic Society.” organized so a0 combine component into previously nonexistent wholes, be they products, processes, or projects. The foal of the sytetie society i innovation. That, is goa sto create newer, higher-performance prod- {iets or 10 achieve higher quality In existing products more cheaply by integrating components In the production process in new ways. (198917) Harvey points out hat inflexible accumulation, where production can be standardized thas “proved hard t stop its moving to take advantage of low-paid labour power inthe third word, creating there what Lipiet2 (1986) calls ‘peripheral Foedis’”(1989a:155). "These sensations are often evoked by other postmodern aesthetic forms. Jameson pots out that al though the Bonaventure Hotel suggests an allencompassing whole, once a person actualy goes inside, the experience of space and volume i profoundly disorienting, The hotel “gives the feeling that emptiness thre is absoltely packed, that it isan element within which you yourself are immersed, without any of that distance that formerly enabled the perception of perspective or volume” (196483). What i lst isthe perspective ofa human observer. Calling Philp Johnsoa’s ATT building the manifesto ofthe postmod- fm movement in American architecture,” a sympathetic crite points out that is architect has achieved Similar effect by puting the shape ofa Chippendale chest in elephantine scale on top of skyscraper Hat= ison 1989:115). The dramatic disjunction of scae between the chestbullding and the observer isa ds- ‘orienting as itis funny: if that isa chest then who pus his or her clothes in there? "Other postmodern aesthetic forms also depict dislocation in time. “Postmodernist architecture, forex: ample, takes bits and pieces from the past quite eclectically and mises them together at will” Harvey 49893°54:itisa “random cannibaization of al the styles of the past ameson 1964-65-66). Experience isreduced to a “series of pure and unrelated presents in time” (Harvey 1989a:53). Postmodernism "aban dons) al sense of historical continuity and memory while simultaneously developing an incredible ability ta plunder history and absorb whatever finds thee a some aspect ofthe present” (Harvey 1989a°54), "see Harvey (19893:52) for a description ofthe inability to unity past, present, and future, which is a ‘common characteristic of postmodern aesthetics and literature "Elsewhere | plan to examine a change from the body/person as an agent of productive processes the worker on a Fors assembly line tothe body as ise a resource, whose parts can be stored, cloned, and ‘marketed. California man, fo example, i contesting the right of scientists atthe University of California {to own, patent, and prot rom a clone of a malignant T cell taken fom his spleen. The celine was named the "Ma" call ine, presumably after the man’s name, Moore. newspaper account remarks that "the medical profession to regard people as products i growing, especially once that issue 's body” (Ferrell 1990). lawyer who, acting on behalf ofthe nation's largest consumer heath group led a brief in suppor of Moore’srightsto his cel line comments, We didn’t want physicians ‘viewing patents as potential treasure roves.” But then, asi realizing tht granting people legal ights to their body tissue hardly ends the problem, she adds, “Perhaps it shouldbe 3 limited form of property [Wie don’t want hosptals holding people hostage fr ther valuable organs i they did't pay thee bills (ere 1980), "sin her work Haraway eloquently stessesthe displacement ofthe hierarchical, localized body by a new kind of body “a highly mabe field of suategicaiferences, a semiotic sytem, a complex meaning ‘rodcing fel” (1989:15) No one could improve on her characterization ofthese new elements; would ‘only ad that thee may be stategic reasons why a kind of emmant ofthe old body fcaried forward with the new, "think thatthe emphasis on the purity of the self is related to what Petchesky calls the ideology of “privat” (1981-208). "For lack of space, | cannot deal withthe subtleties of how this “ld body discourse” appears in intr views. Stfice ito say that military metaphors are extremely widespread, "These include mass media magazines such as Time and Newsweek, as wel as The National Geo: _raphic. They also include moce expensive items, such as Lennart Nisson's popular coffee table book, The Body Victorious (1985). "Overheard by Paula Treichler personal communication Heard in a department gues lecture, the end of the body? 1352B calls are not always feminized: in Fighting Disease, for example they are described as admials and supetmen (Michaud, Feinstein, apd Editors 1989.7, 13), Gibbs discusses the literal and figurative invisibility of black males inthe United States Two hundred years after blacks were fist counted as. only three-fifths of a person by the framers of the US. Constitution in 1787, young black men are stil being discounted by the US. Census Bureau in 1987 with the same efiec of denying their existence and disentanchising them as citizens. [1988:27 ‘contrast that may help make my point can be drawn with 1th-centuy paintings that show black men “leaning bones for anatomical skeletons. Jordana analyzes these paintings a: showing the association of biackmen with otherness, with death, evi, and the profane, even with cannibalism, which s conveyed by the apron and pots that could well be used for cooking. They represent that which must be kept apart om the white, male sclence in whose service they work. instead of paintings, we now have widely dissemi nated micrographs, We se only molecules, molecules that everyone, regardless of race, gender, of as, posseses, molecules shown in technicolor, every cola ofthe rainbow. Macrophages, T cel, and B cells ‘do not usually appear to have the phenotypic markers of race or gender; but because ofthe cultural lie they ae iven as cele, they ae carrying inside our bodies a hierarchy of distinctions based on race, class, and gender, a hierarchy that 15th-century paintings cated, more obviousy, on ther surfaces ordanova 1989) >See Kash (1989) for a lengthy discussion of why teamwork is equired in the economic world of today. Such increasingly specified marketing is taking place in an economic context in which marketing and isubution increasingly dominate overproduction. According to Rabinbach, the image that stod forthe limiting condition on work was idleness in the "ath century fatigue i the 19th century By the 1880's. the long tradition of indus edfication—in which “the power of the will” and the ‘moa, ntellecual, and spiritual benefits of work are opposed tothe debilitating effects of slot, Indol- ‘ence, and the endemic laziness of barbaric peoples-—began to lose is discursive power. This tadion, ‘which ses in work the properties of moral as well as economic emancipation—as opposed to drudgery “nd pain—derived it epitmacy frm the idealization othe artisan andthe attempt to impose that mane ‘on industrial work With the socal decine othe artisan, idleness lots eapact to conjure up the moral {error ofthe workless tate Instead, it was excesive, itegulr, and pooly organized work that produced fatigue and defeated the body. (1986484) This statement passes over a possibility Ihave no space to develop here, that “exbility” has always been a necessary adaptation ofthe very poor, under Fordst systems ae wel as late capitalism, Meould be that now the middle classes have to become exible” while, a | suggest below, the lower classes are simply disposable >This article also quotes a former tenant: Harborplace “was hike living under the Gestapo. Merc _were under constant pressure to perform” (Tyner 1990b: 11). 2"Jameson suggests that |e do not yet possess the perceptual equipment f0 match this new hyperspace [of a postmodern ‘world [TThe newer architecture... stands ay something like an imperative to grow new organs, 10 ‘expand out Sensorium and our body io some new, as yet unimaginable, perhaps ukumately impossible, dimensions 198480) AS Redlield and Burke explain, “At some point the T 4 cells that orchestrate the immune response ‘become so depleted thatthe balance of power Switches, HIV then replicates wildly, kiling the remalaing, 4 cells and ence any vestiges of immune defense” (1989:72, A panda goes off with a woman ofthe streets to a hotel room, where they make love. Afterward the pnd starts leave and the prostitute stops him, saying. “Don't you know you have to pay? That the ‘meaning ofa prostiute.” The panda refuses. So the prostitute says, “Look here inthis dictionary you'll Se the definition ofa prostitute: a lady who gives sex in return for money.” The panda says, "Well, lok atthe defintion ofa panda.” They tum to “panda.” The definition reads: "Panda: eats bush, shoots, and leaves. See Sylvia Law (1988:218) onthe meaning secular opposition to homosexuality and is instantiation inthe law Haraway (1985) discusses the importance ofthe homework economy and its inks with ace and gen erin ime of international capt >>the concep of social reproduction is crucial here, and not yt well developed. Lipuma and Meltzoft (1989:322) give a useul definition: “nt only material reproduction but the reproducing of embodied di postions, rom regional dialects and educational horizon to senses of eligios dy, sell-woth, and man Gibbs analyzes how neoconservatism has shifted the emphasis from the goal of providing all citizens with a decent standard of living through federally subsidized bealth and weltare programs tothe need to blame the poor and disadvantaged for their perceived lack of motivation, their “dysfunctional” family systems, and ther dependency on wel- fare programs. (1988:211 196 american ethnologistSee Gibbs (1988:3-8) ora discussion of recent racist incidents the Unite States >There are echoes ofthis line of thought in domains that have no space to explore hee. For example, deep ecology sometimes implies thatthe demise of certain people would help preserve the ecosystem. Statements sch asthe following ae highly ambiguous on this point: "The fate othe lortunatesmsmutably bonded tothe fate ofthe dispossessed ough the land, water, and at in an ecologically endangered world, poverty is 3 laxury we ean no longer afford” (Durning 1990:153) an episode on 15 Match 1990 showed a doctor who ad refused to operate onan AIDS patient and ‘was being sed bythe patient’ wile. Speaking onthe stand in his own defense, the doctor said tha the Patient’ immune System had broken down anyway and that he could not have lived fr more than afew months 2" part ofthis description would show bow the conflict between the body as a self-regulating system for flexibly pectic response and the body as something intemally fragmented along the lines of hers ‘chica power relationships i inherent in particular representations inthe media or nthe way people ak about the immune system: For example, one man objected strenuously toa picture on the cover of Time ‘magazine tat showed a white blood cell boxing a gem in a cutaway view ofa person. He said thatthe Picture was misleading because it did't depict a system: Steven Baker The immune system isthe whole body, it's not ast the lungs o the abdomen, t's, I mean If ct myself, doesnt my immune system star to work right away to prevent infection? 6 ws in yout finger; I mean i everywhere. 50 that would be my crtcism to Time magazine, Stromberg suggests that systems of symbols (fo religious conversion) can function to help people “ex- pres and come to terms with persisting emotional ambivalence” (1990-42). am interested in whether Systems of symbols for thinking about the body’ immunity are sometimes used to express and work on Pesisting social and psychological contadictions related tothe existence ofa global system of flexible Sccumlotion and, inthe United States, dramatic instal restrcturing See also Crimp 1988, Crimp and Ralston 1990, and Treichler 1987. ‘xe other work in progress a exploring the remarkable political successes of AIDS activist groups even ina homophobic climate, references cited Arens, W. 1979 The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy. Oxford: Oxiord Univesity Press Beldecos, Athena, etal 1988 The Importance of Feminist Critique for Contemporary Cell Biology. Hypatia 311):61-76, Sofin, Tessa, and Sunil Gupta, eds. 1990 | Estate Antibodies: Resisting the AIDS Mythology. London: Unwin Hyman, on, Will et a 1990 Recognition of Heat Shock Proteins and Gamma Delta Cell Function. Immunology Today THQr40-45, Brownlee, Sharon 1990 ‘The Body at War. U.S. News and World Report, 2July:48-54, Business Week 1984. The “Blunders” Making Millions for 3M. Business Week 2851 (16 July:118. Corey, Mary 1990). Endangered Species: Oficils Lok for Ways to Reduce Risks in Being Young, Black and Male The Sun Baltimore) 4 Apis IE CConigan, Philip, and Derek Sayer 1985 "The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution. Oxford: Blackwell Crimp, Douglas, ed 1985_AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Crimp, Douglas, and Adam Ralston, eds. 1990 "AIDS Demo Graphics Seatle: Bay Press Davis, Mike 1984 The Political Economy of Lat-Imperal America, New Left Review 143:6-30, During, Alan 8. 1990" Ending Povey n State of the World 1990, Lester R. Brown etal, eds pp. 135-153. New York ‘Norn Dyer, John M. 986 The Body at War: The Miracle ofthe Immune System. New Vork: New American Library. Fertll 1 1990 Surgeons Removed and Sold His Spleen Cell: Should He Get a Cut The Sun (Baltimore), 21 Janway'5t Flax, Jane 1890. Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory. I FeminismPostmodernism. Linda [Nicholson, ed. pp. 39-62. New York Routledge, the end ofthe body? 137Gallo, Rober C. and Lue Montagniet 1989 ° The AIDS Epidemic. In The Science of AIDS: Readings from Scientife American Magazine. 1=11, New York: W. H. Feman. Gelderman, Carol 1981” Henry Ford: The Wayward Capitalist New York: St. Matin’ ros Gis, Jewelle 1988. "Young Black Male in America: Endangered, Embitered, and Embatle. In Young, Black, and ‘Male in America: An Endangered Species. Jewelle Gibbs etal, eds. pp. 1=36. Dover, MA: Auburn House. Glassner, Bary 1983 "Bodies: Why We Look the Way We Do and How We Feel about, New York: G. P. Putnam's ‘ons. Gram, Antonio 1971 "Selections fom the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. Q. Hoate and G.N. Smith eds, New ‘York: international Publishers, Hall Stuart "88 The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Criss ofthe Let. London: Verso. Haraway, Donna 1985 A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism inthe 1900's. Socialist Review 8065-108, 1989. The Biopolitcs of Postmodern Bodies: Determinations of Self in Immune System Discourse Di ferences 113-43. Hardison, ©. 8 1989 "Disappearing through the Skylight. New York: Viking arson, Bennet, and Batry Bluestone 1983 "The Great U-Turn: Corporate Restructuring and the Polarizing of America. New York: Basic Books. Harey, David 19883, The Condition of Postmoderity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Oxford: Bas Blackwell, 19855. The Urban Experience. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press Health Education Resource Organization 1989 "Health Education Resource Organization Buddy Training Manual, Baltimore, MO: Health Ed: cation Resource Organization. Jaggar, Alison Mand Susan R. Bordo 1989 Gendes Body Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Bing and Knowing. New Brunswick, NI Rutgers University Pres, Jameson, Fredric 1964 ” Postmodernism, o the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, New Left Review 146:53-92. Jaret, Peter 11986 “Our immune Sse: The Was Within, Naonl Geographic 166702-735. Jara Leon 1988.” Stop That Germ! Time 131(21)'56~66 Jewler, Donald 1989 Diabetes ad the Immune System. Diabetes Forecast, August:32-40. Jobson, Mark 1987” The Body inthe Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, Chicago: Uni- ‘versity of Chicago Pres Jordanova, U1 1969 Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Twen- ‘ith Centuries. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press Kash, Don E 1989 Perpetual Innovation: The New World of Competition New York: Basic Books, Kobren, Grn 1989 Body onthe Fritz. To Your Health. The Sun (Baltimore), 3 October4-6 ozo, Jonathan 1980 The New Untouchables. Newsweek (wintrsping special issue) 114(27):48-53, Kroker, Ath and Mariouise Kroker 1987 Body Invaders: Panic Sex im America, New York St. Matin’ Pres Law, Sylvia 1588” Homosexuality and the Social Meaning of Gender. Wisconsin Law Review 2:187~235, Lena, Joe 1984 "The Vitus Invasion, Time 123(18):67. Levistrauss, Claude 1967" Tiss Tropiques: An Anthropological Study of Primitive Societies in Brazil John Russell tans. New York: Atheneum, Lipuma,Edwacd, and Sarah Keene Meltzot 1989. Toward a Theory of Clture and Class: An Iberian Example. American Ethnologist 16:313-334 138 american ethnologistLochhead, Carolyn 1989 » Poor Neighborhoods Fall toa Widening Decay. Insight 5(14:10-12. ‘Macshery, Clinton 1990 Harbor Sighs: As Harborplace Tums 10, Some Merchants Grouse about Rouse. City Paper 14(10)8-10, Martin, Emily 1987- The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston: Beacon Press 1991 The Egg and the Sperm: How Sclenee Has Consiructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male- Female Roles. Signs 1613: 1-18. Michaod; Ellen, Alice Feinstein, and the Editors of Prevention Magazine 1989. Fighting Disease: The Complete Guide to Natural Immune Power. Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press Mize, Sever Band Peter Jaret 1985 "In SeDefense, San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Moulin, Anne Marie 1969 The Immune System: A Key Concept forthe History of Immunology. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 11'221-246 Newman, Frank 1988 "AIDS, Youth and the University: An Interview with Admiral Watkins. Change 20(5):39-4 Nilson, Lennart 1985 The Body Victorious. New Vork: Delacone Press (Outram, Dorinda "1989" The Body and the French Revolution: Sex, Clas, and Political Culture, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Parry, Jonathan 1969 "The End of the Body. In Fragments for a History ofthe Human Body. Part2. Zone, no. 4. Michael Feher ed. pp. 491-517. New York Zone (distributed by MIT Press Petchesky, Rosalind Pollack 1981 Ansiabortion, Antifeminism and the Rise of the New Right. Feminist Studies 721:206-246, Pore, Michael J, and Charles F Sabe 1964 The Second Industral Divide: Possibilities fr Prosperity. New York: Basic Books. Rabinbach, Anson 1982 The Body without Fatigue: Nineteenth Century Utopia. In Political Symbolism in Moder Eu: rope: Essays in Honor of George L. Mosse. Seymour Drescher, David Sabean, and Allan Shari, ed pp. 42-62. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. 1986 The European Sclence of Work: The Economy ofthe Body atthe End of the Nineteenth Century In Work in France: Representations, Meaning, Organization, and Practice. Steven Laurence Kaplan ‘and Cynthia | Koepp, eds. pp. 475-513. haca, NV: Cornell University Pes. Redfield, Rober, and Donald 5 Burke 1989 "HIV Infection: The Clinical Picture. In The Science of AIDS: Readings from Scientific American Magazine. pp. 64-73, New York: W. H Freeman. Roit Ivan, Jonathan Brostof,and David Male 1985 "Immunology. St Lous, MO: C. V. Mosby. Schindler, Lydia Woods 1988” Understanding the Immune System. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human ‘services Schoenberger fxca 1907 Technological and Organizational Change in Automobile Production: Spatial Implications. Re- ional Studies 21(3-199-214 Sel, Stewart 1987 "Basic immunology: Immune Mechanisms in Health and Disease. New York: Elsevier Sheridan, Alan 1980” Michel Foucault: The Will o Truth London: Tavistock, Silver, Edward A, and Rein Peterson 1985 Decision Systems fr Inventory Management and Production Planning. New York: Wiley Silverstein, tur Mt 1989 Astor of immunology. San Diego, CA: Academic Press Smith, Ben 1990 Ga, Stadent Hospitalized Speechless after Racial Treas, The Sun Gatimore), 14 Apri:1A, 3A. Stocking, George 1987 Victorian Anthropology, New York: Foe Pres, Somberg, Peter G. 1990 ideological Language inthe Transformation of Identity, American Anthropologist 92:42-56, ‘Therboen, Gran 1986 "Why Some Peoples Are More Unemployed Than Others. London: Verso. Treichler, Paula 1987 "Aids, Homophobia, and Biomedical Discourse: An Epidemic of Signitication. Cultural Studies 1(3:263-305. the end ofthe body? 139Tyner, Joon 19903 "Overhaul Wl Bring New Retailers to Harboxpace. The Sun (Balimore), 18 Api: 1, SE. 19905 Making the Grade. Maryland Business Weekly, The Sin Baltimore), 2 Api: 10-13, USAie Magazine 1990 "A Decade of Posts, USAir Magazine 124): 10, Washington HIV News 1988.” Layman’s Guide to HIV. Washington HIV villas, Raymond 1977 ENTANGLED OBJECTS | Exchange, Material Culture, and | Colonialism in the Pacific, | Nicholas Thomas Drawing on his work on contem- | porary postcolonial Pacific soc\- ties, Nichols Thomas takes up three sve central to moder an thropology: the cultural and po- litical dynamies of colonial en counters, the nature of Western tnd non-Western transactions, and the significance of material objects in socal if. Along the | way, he rases doubts about any | simple “usthem’ dichotomy be- tween Westemers and Pacific Is landers, challenging the preoccu- pation of anthropology with cultural diferences by stressing the shared history of colonial en- tanglement $52.50 cloth $14.95 paper News 10:5. Maraism and Litratue. Oxford: Oxford University Press LANGUAGE AND SYMBOLIC POWER Pierre Bourdiew Edited and Inoduced bylohn B. Thompson “Translated by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson ‘ThisvolumebringstogetherBourdeshighly original writings on language and on the relstions among language, power, and polities. Bourdieu develops a forceulcrtiquo traditional appreachestolanage, Including the linguistic theories of Saussure and ‘Chomsky andthe theory ofspech actslaborstedby ‘Austinand others. He argues that language shouldbe ‘iewed as a means of communication a well as 3 ‘medium of power through which individuals pursue their own interests and display their practical compe $34.95 cloth | 79Carden St, Cambridge, MA 02138 (617) 495-2480 140 american ethnologist