428 RüdigerKunow
into the public sphere of a given collectivity. This is both desirable—
communicating one's bodily problems being the precondition for
eliciting sympathy and support (see the discussion of Cavell's We
above)—butalsoproblematic.Inthecontextoftheongoingintrusionof
technology into the ways people manage their lives, the somatic is
inserted into the space of the semantic; and the contingencies and
idiosyncrasies of the former are likely to get adjusted to thetoujours-
déjà-donnéofthelatter.Texts,becauseoftheirdependenceonlinguistic
and more narrowly narrative conventions, are designed to cover a vast
varietyofinstancesanddemandadjustmentoftheinvididualcasetothe
generalitiesoftheculturalarchive.Thisisnotmerelyanepistemological
diagnosisbutasocialandculturaldilemma:whena"bodybecomestext
.. ., it also loses whatever claims it might have had to the kind of
privacy, the intimacy of memory and desire, that an inviolable
personhoodwouldhavebeenabletoclaim..."(Holloway162-63).And
so, biology is once again a figure of intervention into the status quo of
human life. The "intextuation" of the body sponsored by genetics and
other forms of biotechnological enhancement is not so much the high
road to its liberation from the demands of the somatic; rather, one
determinationisbeingexchangedforanother.
This proposition has several implications for cultural-critical
practice, chief among them a questioning attitude towards
textualizationsofthesomaticasaself-validatingconstructivistpractice.
Instead, it mandates a different orientation for cultural-critical inquiry.
Attentionwouldneedtobedirectednolongertowardshowembodiment
istextualizedbutratherathowandwherethesetextualizationserasethe
position of the body as the core of our innermost self and an intimate
Other. And, as was already noted in the introduction, the claim for an
"inextricabilityofcultureandbiology"(Wald,"AmericanStudies"190)
mustnotbereadasdescribingaseamlessamalgamationofsomaticsand
semanticsbutratherasacalltoreviewtheconflictualrelationsbetween
thesetwodiscursivefields.
here.–Butlerisalsonotablyambivalentaboutthebenefitsofinsertingthebody
into the universe of discourses where it is threatened with "either
unintellegibilityoranoverloadofintellegibility"(ButlerandAthanasiou68).