Paper short abstract:

This exploratory introduction to the panel outlines anthropological approaches to metamorphoses, examining possibilities and problems in the textual and visual representation of bodily transformation as a material process.

Paper short abstract:

Co-authored by the anthropologist and her interlocutor in long term solitary confinement in a US maximum security prison, this textual collage interrogates the meaning and power of metamorphosis achieved through a range of creative and expressive bodily practices.

Paper long abstract:

This paper shares excerpts from two years of written exchanges between friends: a white well-traveled anthropologist and an African American prisoner who has spent 29 years in solitary confinement on Death Row in Pennsylvania. They co-author this presentation that reveals an 'inside' that challenges most popular and academic representations made of prisoner experience and personhood. Their textual exchanges will explore individually and collaboratively figured ideas about how power, both personal and relational, can be harnessed by disciplining the body through a broad range of creative and expressive practices. These practices include martial arts, body-building, meditation, prayer, fasting, painting, the reading and writing of poetry and prose, and the composing of letters. Such physical and mental work also includes speaking back to poor conditions and racism, studying the law and seeking justice for oneself and others through it. The anthropologist and prisoner reflect on how their discussion may have meaning for others. They also ask each other questions and challenge each other to think about how and why meaningful metamorphoses can take place against all physical and mental odds. They think about why certain bodily techniques facilitate such profound and life affirming changes, and then turn their gaze outward to think about why various public and State discourses and practices would seek to stifle them. Finally they share their visions for a future metamorphosis that leads to freedom and the possibilities of a State without bars.

Paper short abstract:

This talk uses the example of my robotic surgery to describe the transformation of the body through the hospital system, and to describe the relationship between the surgeon's body, the da Vinci robot's body, and my body, as information, action and sensory experience traverses their interfaces.

Paper long abstract:

This talk uses the example of my 2016 robotic surgery to describe an experience of the transformation of my body through the hospital system, and in particular, to describe the relation between the surgeon's body, the da Vinci robot's body, and my body, during surgery. It will be argued that as information, action and sensory experience traverses the interfaces between these three bodies (surgeon, robot and me), new ontologies and new actors emerge.

Throughout the whole process, my corporeal, biological body is a focus of concern for all, for it is this body that will live or die, and will bear the marks of the clinical successes and failures of the surgery. However, in the performance of the surgery this biological body is displaced by the body as a data-source for the construction of numerical, auditory and graphical representations for the anaesthetists, and as a data source for the high-definition 3D representations generated by, and for, the hybrid robot- surgeon. Having been transformed to a data source, my corporeal body is then physically transformed through the sight and touch of the surgeon-robot: the human surgeon neither sees my corporeal body, nor touches my corporeal body. These abstracted, constructed representations of the body are thus the key vectors for the interactions of the human, non-human and hybrid actors participating in the surgery, and are the key vectors for the relations of these constructed representations to one another.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the theoretical roots of representations of sensory impoverishment in driving in automobilities research. It goes on to highlight an emerging body of anthropological work that is attuned to the sensory dimensions of driving, and their transformation by new technologies.

Paper long abstract:

Innovations in automobile technology have destabilised boundaries between states, cars and drivers. For the driver's body, these are replete with possibilities for new sensory experiences. For example, on the matter of the transport system/car nexus, Intelligent Transport Systems have enabled new ways in which states can intervene within cars to optimise drivers' capacities to move more safely, efficiently and pleasurably. On the matter of the car/driver nexus, new in-car technologies have enabled the emergence of hybrid ontologies ('carsons') whereby, as Idhe puts it, the driver "feels the very extension of himself through the car as [it] becomes a symbiotic extension of his own embodidness." Yet, recent work on automobility tends to represent such transformations as sensorially impoverishing. This paper has three aims. (1) I review currents in automobilities research that represent sensory impoverishment in contemporary driving. (2) I argue that this trend is a legacy of post-WWII Marxian thought. In this tradition the car came to be an apposite 'vehicle' for critique of Capitalist Modernity, whose quintessential productive form was, after all, Fordism. In turn, driving came to be loaded with a range of evils. Above all, it was presented as the quintessential experience of late-Capitalism alienation, a central manifestation of which was estrangement from the environments we inhabit and, thereby sensory impoverishment. (3) Lastly, with reference to case studies from Bosnia, Turkey and the West Bank, I highlight an emerging body of anthropological work that is attuned to the sensory dimensions of driving and their transformation by new technologies.

Paper short abstract:

Implantable medical devices are continually becoming the treatment of choice in Western biomedical models. This paper will explore the ways in which the move towards the use of implantable medical devices is extending sites of state power over Indigenous bodies in Central and Western Australia.

Paper long abstract:

As biomedicine continues to move further and further into a space of technologically constructed interventions instead of therapeutic treatments, the ways in which medicine can impact the body are becoming more literal than ever before. Medical interventions are now piercing skin and sitting under it, for example in the increased use of dialysis in end-stage renal disease, stents placed into heart valves to treat heart disease, cochlear implants in deafness, and cornea transplants in poor eyesight. All of these medical interventions are used to treat illnesses that disproportionally affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia. In this paper, I will explore the ways in which the disruption of Indigenous bodies by technological medical interventions or implantable medical devices carry personal, social, and political significance, particularly in Central and Western Australia. I will also locate medical interventions in a broader political economy and environment of biopower and interventionist practices that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have faced, and continue to face in contemporary Australia.

Paper short abstract:

Gene therapy sometimes cures, sometimes causes harm, and more often produces new states of partial wellness. This paper asks what that means for the notion of 'cure', bodily wholeness and the temporality of disease.

Paper long abstract:

When gene therapy began to be used in human subjects in the early 1990s, an early experiment appeared to be a great success. Two children, previously afflicted by a rare and serious immune disorder, underwent a dramatically visible transformation. Amongst their various medical improvements, they grew lymph nodes and tonsils where previously there had been none. This paper considers the bodily transformations brought about by gene therapy, an experimental molecular technique that replaces faulty genetic segments to curative ends. I walk through some of the ways in which gene therapies refigure bodies, saving lives while in some cases creating other diseases in the process, or amending but not quite resolving severe disease. I use ethnographic observations from the hospital to reflect on the notion of the 'cure', and what it implies about bodily wholeness, the temporality of disease, and the impulse towards permanence. In closing I touch upon the relationship between bodies, states and experimental medicine, asking what bodily manipulations and metamorphoses are permissible, and within what limits.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines religious ritual upon the pilgrimage routes of north and east coast Sri Lanka. The sanyasi and zoomorphic metamorphosis of pilgrims is analysed to explore the relationship between the state, conflict and these culturally relative esoteric displays of interaction with the cosmos.

Paper long abstract:

With the dust beginning to settle on the two and half decades long conflict in Sri Lanka the Tamil Saiva (Hindu) communities of the north and east coast of the island are able to express and explore themselves and their society through various religious rituals not possible during the conflict. One such opportunity has come through the opening up of pre-conflict pilgrimage routes. This paper presents ethnographical findings from the Kathirakamam Pada Yatra, a five hundred kilometre foot pilgrimage that traverses the length of the island, to sketch not only the complexity but also the beautiful simplicity of the relationship that the stalwart devotees experience with their world. The metamorphoses that will be discussed consider the transformation of lay devotees into an amalgamation of quasi sanyasi wanderers. This discussion will be anthropologically analysed through devotees' experiences of conflict, relationship(s) to the state and through a larger South Asian narrative that explores the historical and contemporary ideological importance of the renouncer, or sanyasi, within Hindu society.

Zoomorphic metamorphoses of pilgrims and ritual specialists will also be presented in an endeavour to not only highlight the extraordinary esoteric avenue that is entertained to interact, experience and embody divinity but also to open up a discussion on the social forces such as caste, conflict, economy and the state that foster, inform and often manifest such metamorphic displays.