I pity the fool who does not begin to reconceptualize the cyborg and its relevance, both in theory and practice, to aging and the body. While some scholars such as C.L Cole (1993, 1998) have articulated the boundary transgressions and false dichotomies involved in sick/healthy bodies, for instance, few cyborg scholars have applied cyborg theory (Haraway, 1985, Gray, 2001) specifically to the aging body in sport/popular culture. Remember Sly Stallone's run-in with Australian border police a couple years ago, during which he had numerous ampules of growth hormone in his possession, and his subsequent and near advocacy-level plugs for the use of HGH in the popular media? Stallone's multi-generational corporeal metamorphoses speak as a visual and epistemological exercise in the aging cyborg. What is it to see aging, and in what ways do we come to know aging? Directly? Indirectly? Via observation or experience? Objectively or Subjectively? Enthusiastically, begrudgingly, or fearfully? How do we read the aging cyborg body? With envy or disdain? With desire or dread? With intent to applaud or need to punish? Shredded Sly doesn't care. He has always playfully, perhaps forcefully, but always openly, been a cyborgian shape shifter...his trick one of temporally situated, yet perpetually looping tracks between atrophy and hypertrophy. If age is a number, the body a canvass, identity a series of projects, death inevitable, and technology an endless series of 1's and 0's, then what knows the cyborg of retirement?62-as-illusion/reality rupture
You've seen the Terminator too many times. Stallone is a juiced-up old guy trying to hang onto his youth. I don't see anything profound about that. Pathetic, maybe. But not profound. I put it in a class with cosmetic surgery, diet pills, and toupees. Oh, and Stallone doesn't loop between hypertrophy and atrophy. I doubt he's ever come off the stuff in the past 30 years.
ReplyDeleteWhich cyborg are we referring to here? Haraway's potentially emancipatory cyborg or the cybernetic organism that blasted monkeys to outer space in the name of military-industrial technoscience? Does it even matter?
ReplyDeleteFWIW, Haraway herself seems to think so.
Can we choose between them both, contingently and bodily? And must this choice be fully rational, or would that force us into the confines of the patriarchal being-in-the-world that Haraway seeks to subvert?
Put differently, can we Switch?
There's nothing wrong with trying to hold on to your youth. I think taking steroids and trying to stay fit is better than being a couch potato who does nothing but complain about arthritis and eat dinner at Denny's at 4 in the afternoon. Of course, I would do neither but at least your doing something even if it is ridiculous and a lame.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing wrong with trying to hold on to your youth. I think taking steroids and trying to stay fit is better than being a couch potato who complains about arthritis all day and eats dinner at Denny's at 4 in the afternoon. Of course, I would do neither but at least with steroids you're doing something, even if it is stupid and lame.
ReplyDeleteAn actor/actress has many stressors in his career, one being the unstopable aging process. An actor/ess may take steroids or growth hormones ect, to try and stay "fit looking" and young, but a lot of it would have to do with the fact that once they start to get old their career is about to go down the drain. Athletes on the other hand, once they get older, if they still stay fit, they can still have a chance of prolonging their career. Stay in shape, treat your body right, and i feel that would prolong your career. The people who are taking performance enhancing drugs are in it for the quick win. How long are their bodies going to be able to handle the unnatural use of drugs?
ReplyDeleteAging is a process that cannot be stopped, and humans cannot accept that fact. There is no excuse for taking performance enhancing drugs, it is an addiction no matter what career someone is currently involved in. May it be a addiction to youth, strength or happiness...
Kaitlin Lynch 164 (m/w)