CorporealSemiotics:TheBodyoftheText/theTextoftheBody 425
wasplayedsin.Inthisgeneralsense,then,thenotionofahermeneutics
of suspicion becomes a conceptual shorthand for an emphatic, radical
form of interpretation, for a hermeneutics under duress, in the face of
life-threateningdiseases.
Bodies canbesigns, and they cansendsigns. Whether these signs
are scopic, gestural, linguistic, or visualized with the help of technical
equipment,theirsemioticsinvolvebodiesinthepursuitofinterpretation,
a pursuit that is as animated as it often remains inconclusive. After all,
many of the body's structures and operations have for a long time in
human history remained unfathomable to humans and pretty much
remain a secret even today, also to the educated mind. And so, human
embodimentcontinuestoremaina"siteofmultipleinquiries"(Jameson,
Ancients 21), a "hot spot" of hermeneutic inquiry. The analogy
suggested by the term "hot spot" is not entirely gratuitous: like its
geological counterpart, the body is also liable to "eruptions," as in
medical emergencies, epidemic diseases like the plague, yellow fever,
HIV-AIDS,andothers.Anditisinsuchmomentsthatthesignssentby
bodies, that "human legibility" (Holloway xx), is fraught with great
socialbutalsoculturalurgencies.
Inabstractterms,thefundamentalproblemposedbythesemioticsof
human (and other) bodies seems to be that of mapping human
embodiment onto available linguistic concepts and cultural archives.
Such mappings have produced a range of cultural constructs some of
which were discussed in this chapter. At its end, the point is not to
assess the relative merits of available textualizations of human life but
rathertoentertaintheideathattheoftencontradictoryvarietyofcultural
representationspointstoapossiblemismatchbetweenthecorporealities
of human existence and the universe of discourses, between semiotics
and semantics. Roland Barthes's remark (quoted above) concerning "la
grande opposition mythique du vécu (du vivant) et de l'intelligible"
(485)isquitetothepointhere.
Not all is done, and certainly not all is good, when the flesh has
become word, although a curious coalition of geneticists and cultural
critics of the constructivist persuasion are telling us the contrary.
Whetherweashumanbeingsaretakentobe"butreadoutsofourgenes"
(Nelkin and Lindee 57) or "storied biological entities" (Landecker 160;