Now, the scholar asks himself, what constitutes the real ship? That which conserves nothing of the original material yet reproduces its form, or that which has been reduced to a pile of boards? Let us propose, writes Frede, that all the parts of a Greek ship (nothing more than an oversized boat) are progressively replaced and that the worn-out planking is piled up on a beach. The reference to Theseus’s fantastical ship in which he would return to Athens, substituting piece by piece the worn-out planks, is a frequent recurrence in philosophical works-for example, in the work of Michael Frede, wherein he re-evokes it to comment on Aristotle. What then does the unity of the subject consist in? In imaginative, mythopoietic creativity, which alone can contrast the depersonalization of globalization processes and the anonymity infused by the presence of technology.Ī myth crosses all of Western culture, inexhaustibly proposing again and again its enigma. Taken in by the great net of global communication, personal identity risks becoming dissipated into a thousand masks. Instead of condemning bio-technology, Donna Haraway makes an effort to capture its aspects of emancipation and social utopia.

Where then does Anzieu’s skin-Ego begin and where does it end? Cyberpunk science-fiction saw in advance the intimate connection between man and machine, as well as the production of androids, extracting from this hypothesis very interesting consequences. But in the technological age the physiological body extends and strengthens itself with accessories such as the telephone and actual prostheses, like pace-makers or transplanted organs. Freud calls hysterical symptoms “organ language”. In communicational relationships with others, the body expresses that for which adequate words cannot be found. When the subjective body and the objective body intercross, then the image of the body is produced, an image that changes following the development of child sexuality and that individuals model according to their own temperament and history. But the body ego (considered as a system of drives) is captured in a system of dialectics with the other subject. For Freud identity had its roots in the body. Ever since philosophy abandoned the concept of soul it has been difficult to define personal identity.

Theaters Of The Body by Joyce McDougall