Lantern Review: A Journal of Asian American Poetry

Issue 4 | Winter 2012

Margaret Rhee

Materials

“where do the bodies
come from?” “Von
Hagens's exhibits
activate all of these
understandings of
medium in problematic
and interesting ways:
Where does von Hagens
get the “materials”
for his medium of
composition? Do dead
bodies store and/or
transmit information?
Do they provide an
environment of sorts?
How are they, as von
Hagens maintains,
examples of “authentic”
rather than
“reproducible” media?
In activating these
questions, Body Worlds
nicely encapsulates the
central theme of this
forum: the mediation
of life, death, and all
matter(s) in between.”
“Von Hagens's exhibits
activate all of these
understandings of
medium in problematic
and interesting ways:

Where does von
Hagens get the
“materials” for his

medium of composition?
Do dead bodies
store and/or
transmit
information? Do
they provide an
environment of
sorts? How are
they, as von
Hagens maintains,
examples of
“authentic” rather
than
“reproducible”
media?In
activating these
questions, Body
Worlds nicely
encapsulates the
central theme of
this forum: the
mediation of life,
death, and all
matter(s) in
between.”
dead bodies store
and/or transmit
information? Do
they provide an
environment of
sorts? How are
they, as von
Hagens maintains,
examples of
“authentic” rather
than
“reproducible” media?
   “First exhibited in Tokyo
from 1995-1997, German
anatomist Gunther von
Hagens' Body Worlds
exhibits have since been
shown in over 50 venues
throughout Asia, Europe,
and North America,
making them among the
most successful traveling
exhibitions ever. Von
Hagens, who patented the
plastination process used
to preserve the bodies in
the exhibitions, has
commented that Body
Worlds has been so
popular “because it fills
the longing for the
authentic in a time of
practically unlimited
reproducibility.”
The exhibits feature
plastinated human and
sometimes animal
bodies and body parts
arranged around a
central theme—and, as
such, Von Hagens's
dead bodies highlight
the ways in which
media and mediation
can be brought to bear
on the biological.”

“Where does von
Hagens get the
“materials” for his
medium of
composition?”
Where does von
Hagens get the
“materials”?”
precariously between life and
death, and “live” only when
exhibited in Bodies/Body
Worlds.
precariously between life and
death, and “live” only when
exhibited in Bodies/Body
Worlds.
precariously between life and
death, and “live” only when
exhibited in Bodies/Body
Worlds.
As an Asian Americanist,
with interests in diaspora,
I also want to understand
the ‘necropolitics’ of the
bodies, who are somehow
on the very soil of
America, as “dead” but
“living bodies“ whose race
is literally stripped away,
here because of
transnational capitalistic
flow and need, what does
it mean that Asian
Americans, and (can we
consider the bodies now
Asian Americans) are
exhibited?
Recently, I was at a talk
on Native American
settler colonialism,
which the speaker had
expressed that in the
American mainstream,
Native American culture
can only be considered
‘living’ in a museum.
“Native American culture
can only be considered
‘living’ in a museum.”
At what point is
memory false?
I I I I I I I
Subject subject
subject
Speaking speaking
speaking
Looking Looking
Looking
Dead Dead Dead
I  I   I   I   I   I
Subject Subject
Subject
Object Object
Object
PROPER OBJECT
PROPER OBJECT
PROPER OBJECT
ARE ASIANS
DEAD
AM I ALIVE
DO WE HAVE TO DIE
TO LIVE?
WHY DIDN’T THEY
SEE THE EYES?
WHY DID I SEE THE
EYES?
WERE THEY
LOOKING AT ME?
ARE THE BODIES
NOW
ASIAN
AMERICAN
LOOKING
LOOKKING
LOOKING
DEAD DEAD
DEAD
AM I DEAD
ARE ASIANS DEAD
AM I ALIVE
DO WE HAVE TO
DIE TO LIVE?
WHY DIDN’T
THEY SEE THEIR
EYES?
WHY DID I SEE
THEIR EYES?
WERE THEY
LOOKING [BACK]
AT ME?
ARE THE BODIES
NOW, ASIAN
AMERICAN OR
WHAT?
WHAT WAS
THEIR PAST LIFE
my friend mr.
transgender SF told
me his past life—the
psychic said—was
beyond marvelous.
It’s a secret what I
was. In high school,
he took a gurl to the
prom and they both
wore cute black tux.
No one said
anything. I was king
of them all.
What was my past life?
What is my future life?
WILL I BE IN A
MUSEUM?
Last night, when I read the forum
prompt, I was incredibly tired because
I just came back from campus,
conducting a new media art workshop
for undergrads, but was incredibly
thrilled about the provoking and
thoughtful prompt and forum, and
had to post a note of congrats!
Apologies as I came back to visit the
forum today, and realized there were
some typos, but technology and our
brains late at night, esp when filled
with excitement to read about media,
biology, and art, sometimes always
fails us . . .
Like others have commented, this
forum is truly exciting in the
complicated and fruitful collaborations
media studies, humanities, and STS
when engaging with the
biological/biopolitical.
I want to respond to the following
prompt below engaging with Hsuan L.
Hsu and Martha Lincoln's article,
“Biopower, Bodies . . . The Exhibition
and the Spectacle of Public Health’ I
want to discuss the question of
“materials” specifically the bodies,
which Hsu and Lincoln outline in
their essay.
When I first saw the exhibit,
in 2004/2005 I was struck at
the racial composition of the
bodies.
Where did the bodies come
from? To me, while stripped of
layers of skin, exhibited as
natural medical bodily
phenomena, I looked closely, at
the “bodies” faces, realizing the
they looked Asian to me. Later I
found out they were from China.
And as a qualifier, when I write
Asian, of course I mean what we
now consider Asian comes from
the very racialization of
particular physical
characteristics, whose origins
were highly constructed in the
close kinship of art/science/race.
ie taxonomies of racial groups
and physical characteristics,
eyes, skin color, noses, body. It is
only recently I read scholarship
outlining the racial intersections
and the background of the
Chinese bodies, and thought
Hsuan L. Hsu and Martha
Lincoln's article, “Biopower,
Bodies...The Exhibition and the
Spectacle of Public Health” does
a fantastic job outlining the
transnational politics of Chinese
bodies as art. As Hsu and
Lincoln begin their essay, they
write: “From racial science to the
freak shows, the visual display of
bodies has often associated with
objectification, biological
essentialism, the discursive
inscription of racial
characteristics, and exoticizing
representation of the “other.”
This has been particularly true
of the anatomical gaze, which
has quietly reproduced
disciplinary, biological
essentialized categories when
directed at racialized, gendered,
or criminalized bodies. In the
past century however, racism
has
taken a more subtle turn,
often operating via a logic of
“colorblindness” that
disavows the perpetuation of
structural inequalities. ”
(1) Moreover, Hsu and
Lincoln outline the politics
of the speciman, and the
question to “where do the
bodies come from?” “Where
does von Hagens get the
“materials” for his medium of
composition?” The bodies are
unclaimed bodies of the Chinese
state. However, by being
exhibited, these Chinese
unclaimed bodies, are stripped
away not only of “their skin,
but also their personal history
as well . . .” “in doing so, it
produces a category of beings
who are bearers and exemplars
of humanistic qualities and

values, but undocumented
and physically
unidentifiable. Hsu and
Lincoln provides the
background of the many
Chinese young men,
executed prisoners,
migrants, uncultivated
citizens, whose lives oscillate
precariously between life
and death, and “live” only
when
exhibited.