The transparent body: dispositives of visibility and mutations of sight

Abstract

This paper discusses contemporary ideal of transparent body, understood as a cultural construction mediated by medical tools, media technologies, artistic conventions and social rules. Tagging to Foucault’s dispositif concept, we identificate the search of body transparency as a current cultural symptom, in which body’s perfection, control and maleability are the main goals. In this way, what we obtain by PETscanners and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) enlarges the scope of virtuality, changing our conceptions of body, disease and time. Likewise, spectacular explorations of that body by different media spheres such as TV series, movies and artistic products indicate the urgency of a critical investigation of this theme considering a large cultural network, in which power and knowledge are imbricated in the produciton of new subjectivity modes.