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Abstract
This essay develops a wide range of representation around the “wasting” body of Terri Schiavo using the theoretical considerations of waste and ethics of Zygmunt Bauman and Alain Badiou. Schiavo's body is considered alongside various pig bodies in art and performance to understand how the intersection of these bodies might negotiate a new understanding of “cure.”
Notes
Notes
1. The terms of Schiavo's condition have been disputed, but she was generally considered to be in a persistent vegetative state, which the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke defines as:
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Individuals in such a state have lost their thinking abilities and awareness of their surroundings, but retain non-cognitive function and normal sleep patterns. Even though those in a persistent vegetative state lose their higher brain functions, other key functions such as breathing and circulation remain relatively intact. Spontaneous movements may occur, and the eyes may open in response to external stimuli. They may even occasionally grimace, cry, or laugh.
2. Emphasis in original. He develops this concept from Mary Douglas's Purity and danger (1966, 2005), which is then interwoven through David Morris's Illness and culture in the postmodern age (1998). Morris discusses Douglas and writes “Remove the principle of dirt and you risk damaging the sense of coherence provided by a systematic order” (Morris Citation1998, 184).
3. For a photographic depiction of such excesses see Chris Jordan's work, Intolerable beauty: Portraits of American mass consumption, <http://www.chrisjordan.com/>.
4. Morris's biocultural model provides a rethinking from a medico-cultural perspective. For Morris, medicine is inseparable from culture and he cites a whole host of illnesses that cannot be taken out of their cultural context–AIDS, eating disorders and Tourette's Syndrome, for example. A biocultural model explores perhaps different questions about illness and death and encourages a greater understanding of the patient–including their own stories.
5. Badiou sees “ethics” as a limiting concept built around the idea of evil as that from which good is determined, rather than the other way around; the “event” reformulates the idea of contemporary ethics. Most of Badiou's examples of the event are rather grandiose, such as the French Revolution and Galileo's creation of physics, but he also points to amorous passion as an event. I recognize the possibility that there is no Badiouian event on which to reformulate an ethics in the Schiavo case; my intention is not to apply his theory as I hope he would, but instead to let his ideas provide a refocusing of a lens, a trying out of a formula that might open up a different path towards negotiations between bodies and culture, bodies and politics.
6. Within the almost two million Google hits for the words “Terri Schiavo” (as of October 2007) there are countless blogs, articles and an abundance of opinion, conjecture, fact and fiction on the internet. There are over a dozen books about the Schiavo case, including books written from her parents’ and from her husband's perspectives. See Schindler et al. (Citation2006) and Schiavo and Hirsh (Citation2006). See also Caplan, McCartney and Sisti (Citation2006) and Fuhrman (Citation2005) as a few examples of the range of books dedicated to the case. Due to the speculative nature of the case, I will not attempt to discern “facts” but I will merely posit ideas about possible interpretations. One blog that seems by all counts to repot objectively about the case can be found here: <http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/infopage.html>.
8. For two (of many) accounts corroborating Schiavo's bulimia, See: <http://www.sptimes.com/2003/10/26/Floridian/The_lost_lesson_of_Te.shtml> by Lawyer Gary D. Fox. <http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=2994651>.
9. See Malson (Citation1998) for detailed analysis of the history of the disease and its many forms. Malson describes different “anorexias,” which include symptoms of bulimia, which she notes is now understood as a separate syndrome (Malson Citation1998, 3).
10. See also Weiss (Citation1999), Evans Braziel and LeBesco (Citation2001), Bordo (Citation1993) and Bordo (Citation1997).
11. Patrick Anderson (Citation2005) notes Foucault's term as negotiation between subjectivity and subordination to the state, to discuss the feeding tube in the Schiavo case.
12. My thanks to colleagues Adrian Kear, Joe Kelleher, Ioana Szeman, Maurya Wickstrom, and especially Josh Abrams, for their willing engagement and conversations that have inspired and provoked these thoughts. I also thank the audience members at the Queen Mary Quorum, where I presented an early version of this essay, for their astute and thoughtful comments, as well as the generous and insightful feedback from Deb Levine and the Women and Performance board and Readers.
13. Inthewrongplacelessness was commissioned by HOME, Camberwell, London, for their One to One Salon series and first performed there in January 2005. The piece continues to be done periodically as of this writing, and O’Reilly specifies that although each performance contains different details, the piece is always designed to take place between three vital components–the human animal, the non-human animal and the participant, who enters alone. (Email correspondence with the artist, March 2008.)
14. Tract Live Art Website. See <http://www.tract-liveart.co.uk/Kira%20O'Reilly/Kira%20O'Reilly.html>. The website contains some of the same text as found in the book Sk-Interfaces.
15. Tract Live Art Website. See <http://www.tract-liveart.co.uk/Kira%20O'Reilly/Kira%20O'Reilly.html>.
16. Tract Live Art Website. See <http://www.tract-liveart.co.uk/Kira%20O'Reilly/Kira%20O'Reilly.html>. The piece was heavily covered in the press, and most of the reportage included negative responses from members of PETA. For examples see <http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2006/08/19/1718850.htm>; <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=401165&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/5263540.stm>.
18. BBC News Online, 3 Jan 2002 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1740316.stm>.
19. One exception is an essay in Zoontologies called “At a slaughterhouse, some things never die,” by Charlie LeDuff (Citation2003), which reports, not on the pig itself, but on the treatment of human workers at the Smithfield Pork Packing Company. See also Baker (Citation2000) and Wolfe (2003a/b).
20. For a deeper analysis of the pig's relationship to cleanliness and religious food laws, see Douglas (Citation1966, 2005) and Fabre-Vassas (Citation1997).