Beyond Modernism and Postmodernism: The Narrative of Re-embodiments, (original) (raw)

2016, Contributions to Law, Philosophy and Ecology: Exploring re-embodiments, London: Routledge

The illusory quest for disembodiment, against which the quest for re-embodiments is reacting, appears to be common among 'macroparasites' who live off the work, products and lives of others. Historically, this illusion of disembodiment appears to have legitimated exploitation of others, but in doing so has led the ruling classes of civilizations to destroy the real conditions of their own existence. The modernist and postmodernist forms of this illusion, it is suggested, are transmogrifications of the illusion of disembodiment on which medieval civilization was based. The military aristocracy and the clergy defined themselves through Neo-Platonic Christianity and identified with the eternal, while despising nature, the peasantry and women. This suggestion, that modernist and postmodernist quests for disembodiment are a transmogrification of medieval Neo-Platonic Christianity, is used to expose and reveal the oppressive and destructive nature of the narrative of 'progress' driven by the aspirations of the privileged classes in the modern/postmodern world to free themselves from the constraints of embodiment. The quest for disembodiment is manifest in the quest to free the economy from dependence on labour and natural resources, to be unbound by time and place and to be free of the humdrum of everyday life by entering the world of 'Second Life', an online virtual world. The modern and postmodern forms of the quest for disembodiment, it is suggested, now threaten the future of humanity. This analysis of the continuities in the quest for disembodiment is deployed to clarify the liberating mission of the quest for re-embodiments, exemplified by the quest for Earth democracy and ecological civilization. The narrative of the Age of Re-Embodiments is inseparable from the struggle for 'real' democracy (where members of communities have real power and really govern themselves) with the liberty to augment rather than undermine the ecological communities of which we are part.