Thursday, 16 February 2012

Body and Society Magazine

Body and Society magazine started in 1995 as a journal to theory, culture and society. The magazine has been committed to theoretical openness by a wide range of critical approaches to the body. This magazine has done a number of articles related to body and machines.

One of the articles is 'The invisible woman: The Bioaesthetics of engineered bodies'. This is part of this article.

"Biomechanical engineering is marked by highly experimental efforts to craft mechanical

devices that might one day alleviate the scarcity of transplantable organs in the USA. A

pronounced desire among bioengineers involves melding humans with machines, bearing

the promise of perfecting the natural yet messy flaws of the ‘natal’ body. Not all bodies are

 considered equal within this field, however. Visual renderings of heart devices — as an

unusual sort of body prosthesis — foreground a specialized aesthetic, where the well-toned

 male form defines an idealized generic of beauty and perfection. This analysis considers

 the moral underpinnings of the embodied aesthetic in specific reference to engineers’

efforts to fabricate implantable ‘artificial’ hearts. Of central concern are the sociomoral

consequences of a standardized male beauty, set alongside the striking absence — or

invisibility — of the female form within this rarified field of science."



Sometimes technology isn't that bad and is there to save and help peoples lives and I feel
 we have to remember this when we think about if technology is a good or bad thing. 

No comments:

Post a Comment